Question about image quality

I don't know anything about coin photography, but looking at that image at 100% it looks to me like you have captured a great amount of detail. I'm ready to be corrected by the experts in this field, but it looks fine to me.

Perhaps there will be some suggestions about different illumination so as to bring out the relief more. Or different processing to bring up the microcontrast or some such. Or other things I haven't thought of.

But as it stands, it does look ok to me.

Nick,

Thanks for the feedback. That is really all I'm trying to understand. I don't want to be chasing a level of detail that doesn't exist, if that makes sense. I felt that this was not bad but I was just trying to understand if it was wildly below what I should be shooting for.

Jones

JonesLongShot wrote:

My wife is into metal detecting and I often photograph coins that she finds. I use a Rodagon 80mm enlarging lens on a bellows on my Nikon Z6ii. I've been pretty happy with the results but there is always the nagging question of if you can do better.

I'm looking to understand if I'm in the ball park of what I should be expecting to acheive. If you look at the image below, would you say it's right about what you would expect from a coin photograph? Or, would you say you would expect much more detail? I was considering a reversing ring to see if it made any significant improvement but where we live (rural Spain) it's not as easy to get your hands on an item like that. We don't even have a street address so amazon and ebay deliveries are almost comicle.

If you said to me this is about what you would expect then I'm happy. If you said you would expect an order of magnitude more detail then I'll need to dig deeper.

Thanks for your input.

Jones

I think that's fine but here are my thoughts on making it better.

I find the texture of the background distracting and wish it were more uniform.
But I suspect that's a tradeoff with bring out the relief.

I wish the lighting were more even but that would show less if the shadow on the right weren't so obvious to me.

Nice detail, shows even better with a little tweak

The image quality is very good. 👍

More useful details cannot be found by other methods.

I too think you've captured plenty of detail and also think experiments with lighting would be interesting and might prove rewarding.

I tried some processing and here are some results.  In order to evaluate these, you will want to click on "original size".

Best regards,

Alan

Dehaze only

Dehaze and Sharpen

Dehaze, Sharpen & Gamma (contrast)

bclaff wrote:

I think that's fine but here are my thoughts on making it better.

I find the texture of the background distracting and wish it were more uniform.
But I suspect that's a tradeoff with bring out the relief.

I wish the lighting were more even but that would show less if the shadow on the right weren't so obvious to me.

Nice detail, shows even better with a little tweak

Bill,

Thanks for the input. Your point about the background is well taken. The lighting is a single diffuse source at 45 degrees about 10 o'clock. This seemed to be the best balance of illumination vs relief. I tried multiple sources, point sources, ring and axial lighting. All gave different results. Ring and axial just simply obliterated any relief so I abandoned those quickly.

Jones

3D Gunner wrote:

The image quality is very good. 👍

More useful details cannot be found by other methods.

Thanks,

That is what I needed to know.

Jones

AeroPhotographer wrote:

I too think you've captured plenty of detail and also think experiments with lighting would be interesting and might prove rewarding.

I tried some processing and here are some results. In order to evaluate these, you will want to click on "original size".

Best regards,

Alan

Alan,

Thanks for illustrating the additional processing.

I've tried some other setups that were all interesting but didn't really yield better results. I think if these ancient coins had any smooth shiny surfaces or any specular highlights I'd have a lot more to deal with in a lighting setup. I'm kind of glad they are so plain.

Jones