Digital Coin Photography – H. Craig Hamling – October 2001

Backgrounds

While the camera can be adjusted to change the lens aperture and exposure it is easiest to use in automatic exposure mode.  In automatic mode the camera performs a function called white balancing which is supposed to result in true colors being recorded.  It seems that the camera performs this white balancing on the total picture in the view finder.  Since the finder is rectangular and coins are round, the camera responds to a combination of the coin and the background.  This effect is greatest on coins that are side lighted.  When using reflected light the light bouncing off the coin usually overpowers any light coming off the background so background selection is less important.  Only on really dull surface coins does the reflected light background have much influence on the picture.  Following are pictures of the same coin made with identical side lighting and different backgrounds.

White Paper Towel

Blue Post-it

Yellow Post-it

Pink Post-it

Purple Post-it

The actual coin color is best shown on the pink or purple background for this coin while the blue background gives perhaps the more pleasing image.

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