Charliemouse

James and Henry popped by this week, to 'finish' my run of 2oz Monarchs. Of course there's going to be a bunch next year, and beyond. Never ends, does it. Both from eBay, the James, graded PF69, was a bargain.

Another catch-up for a couple of days. Let's start with the gold, from @Auronum, my first 2017 sovereign, and it's a PF70 Piedfort. The only criticism is that the double thickness is kind of lost in the slab.

Yeah I was agreeing with the lighting choice. My main tip was around using exposure compensation to help with highlights. Parts of the coin are overexposed, causing you to lose detail around 'GIN' and 'ETH' on the obverse. Turning the light down won't help because the camera will just compensate. And agree shooting in raw is always preferable if you can, as it will use lossless compression and will store much more dynamic range. That will allow you to recover much more from the highlights and shadows. JPEGs should only be used as an export format, never to store and edit photos.

Don’t be afraid to underexpose the image, to manage those highlights. Just dial exposure compensation 1 stop down, maybe 2 at most. You can always brighten the image back up in post. It will mean you won’t lose any significant detail in the bright spots. I use diffusion paper (sometimes cooking parchment) in front of a variable light panel. Very effective for coins.

Yes thanks. It's the first I have at that purity. Plenty of 999's and 9999's. But five nines is new to me. Not that it really matters, but still...

I have created a new topic to explain and discuss, since this one is not really for getting into the photography weeds.

Hi This topic was inspired by comments from @theman73 and @Silverlocks. To summarise: trying to use a close-focusing telephoto lens to photograph coins. I have no idea how much you know about photography, so I will try to stay fairly basic. Some of what I say will not be 100% correct, as I may miss out scenarios and exceptions to rules. I welcome people correcting / augmenting my description in the comments. This topic is not meant to be a general tutorial on how to take photos of coins. Definitions (Feel free to skip if you are familiar with the terms.) Basically, aperture is how wide open the lens is. It is controlled by a diaphragm inside the lens that blocks the light. Sometimes this is fixed (most mobile phones), but sometimes it can vary. Confusingly, the wider the aperture, the smaller the f-stop number. f/1 is wide and lets in a lot of light, f32 is narrow and lets in a tiny amount of light. Put simply, depth of field is how much of a scene is in focus. A wide depth of field means both close and distant things are in focus. This is what most 'snappy' cameras and mobile phones want to achieve most of the time, because it's easy - when photographing groups of people, buildings and landscapes, you want everything in focus. A narrow depth of field means only a small 'range of distances' is in focus. This is useful for isolating subjects, like in portrait photography. Optically, depth of field is relative to the f-stop when the photo is taken, and that is determined by the ratio of aperture diameter (how wide open the lens is) to focal length (how long the lens is). The problem Mobile phone cameras have a relatively small diameter and therefore aperture. Normally, because the focal length is also pretty small, this leads to a kind of average f-stop of f/5.6 to f/11. This is a really useful range of apertures, and means that for most photography, most subjects are in focus and most backgrounds are pleasantly blurred. However, strapping a great big telephoto lens on the front means a small aperture coupled with a long focal length, which gives you a very small (high number) f-stop, say f/22 to f/32. So, you are not getting much light onto the sensor. To compensate for that, the phone will either decrease the shutter speed or increase the ISO (sensitivity), or both. Decreasing shutter speed leads to camera shake and motion blur, unless you are using a tripod. Increasing ISO leads to noisy photos and loss of detail. Also, having such a small f-stop has its own problems, as your lens starts to act as a diffraction grating, and you get blur. With such a small aperture, you would think that your depth of field would be pretty good. However, at macro sizes, your depth of field will still, at best, be a couple of millimetres. And that is only if you can get the phone to accurately focus with a third-party lens strapped to it. Put simply, there is no way a phone with a telephoto lens is going to match even the cheapest DSLR or Mirrorless camera with a macro lens. Physics just gets in the way at every turn. A lens and sensor that is 3mm across vs a lens that's ~60mm and sensor that's 35mm - no competition. What I would do Honestly, if your phone has a half decent camera on it with a high enough pixel count and good macro focusing (ultrasonic), take the lens off, hold the camera about 6-12 inches away from the coin, and take a photo. Even better, use a tripod, use manual settings to control the shutter speed and ISO, and that should sort out the camera shake issue too. Your coin will look tiny in the photo, but then crop it down - you have the megapixels to do it. How could it work? If you are thinking of buying a macro or close-focus lens for your phone, think long and hard. If you must, buy one from an established lens manufacturer, not a cheap plastic thing from Amazon. Optical quality makes a difference, and the example photos on Amazon are almost certainly fake. With or without a third-party lens, here are some tips: Use a modern phone. Something at the top of the range from the last 5 years or from a mid-range in the last 2 years. You need a high pixel count if you want to crop photos, and you need reliable focusing. Use a tripod. You can get pretty cheap mobile phone tripods. Get a metal one, not plastic, from a good tripod make. Plastic ones will be useless, and a waste of money. Use manual photo mode on the phone. Keep the shutter speed above 200 for hand-held. Let the ISO go wild - see post-processing. Take lots of photos and see what works - digital photos are free. Control the lighting. Precious metals reflect everything. If you can, build or buy a lightbox - a box about 1-2 feet on every side, with one side open for you, and drape some black cloth over the front to avoid light coming in. Use a flash or torch or some kind of light you can position. Lighting is a huge topic on its own. Learn how to do basic post-processing of photos. Find software that will remove noise from high ISO photos, and can crop and straighten images. I recommend G.I.M.P. which is free and has a lot of open-source community support.

To answer you specifically, I believe @DrDave is going to provide a tutorial / series on photographing previous metals. In the interim, I am happy to give you a few tips, if you want to message me.

I'll take it as a compliment. It's your thing, own it.

🙄 Some people... If you want to get all technical, the wording on the COA is... ambiguous. Oh, and it's 999.99.

And finally, another from @elvee426. Yes, it was me. This thing is stunning. Ever seen a 1oz, 999.99 gold sovereign? Me neither. You can thank me now for removing the temptation from everyone. 🤣

A stunning set of Gold Reverse Proof Maples from @elvee426. No aliens were present (if you get it, you get it). 😉 I only photographed the 1oz because I'm lazy. I might do a combined shot later, since they are actually different 'falling leaf' designs, and frankly are absolutely beautiful.

Next is a cheeky little 1/4oz Brit from @Tn21, in great condition.

Need to catch up on this week's arrivals. Firstly from the redoubtable @James32, these two. I now have 3 out 10. No rush to finish this collection, on the grounds that I like living in a house... Can't decide whether the Griffin or the Falcon are my favourite designs. I guess the Griffin, because I have one. 😁 This Yale needs to teach its younger brother from the Tudor Beasts some grooming tips, because this one's a looker.

@James32 would find that in his turnups.

If it does, we’ll send @James32 round for a ‘visit’. That’s not lead in that cosh.

Tempting, but he’ll scalp you on the postage.

Complete date run. Working on some of the more unusual editions now.

This carded 10g bar from @BullionMan89. Anyone that's flown Qantas will recognise the pattern. Thought I'd vary the angle slightly. It shows that mirror-finish gold can look very different depending on the angle.

Charity Auction for Momodou United at last. The various 'awards' from the charity auction have all arrived. Thanks to @SilverDrum for the jam and Eagle, to @James32 for the baby Eagles, and @stefffana for, you guessed it, the silver spoon! (There may be a few too many 'in jokes' in the image.)

Count me in. I offer this splendid little bar, plus whatever bonus goodies I can find...

From @modofantasma, the 1oz Gold Completer. In front of the 10oz for comparison.

Completed my date run of 1oz Silver Brits. Every year, 1997 onwards.

Yes, I was about to say they've got autumn and winter in the same scene. Seriously though, that's ridiculous. They obviously aren't even looking at what they send out.

I have been wanting do this sort of thing myself for a while now, but kept putting it off. I see people making the same mistakes, and it's not any fault of their own. If you're not 'into' photography, a lot of it can be confusing and counter-intuitive. But a couple of simple concepts will lead to huge improvements. I will definitely learn from "Dr Dave's 'pro' photo tutorial." And I'm more than happy to help out, if I can.