Photographing the 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame Commemorative Proof Dollar

I thought of a whole list of baseball puns to describe what a hit the new Hall of Fame commemorative has been, but I decided not to subject you to them. Suffice it to say everyone is pleased at how successful the coins have been. Even I, myself not a sports fan, was excited by these coins and ordered a proof silver dollar for myself. Why? Because I feel the coin’s elegantly simple design beautifully captures the spirit of the culture of the country I call my home.

I really love my proof Hall of Fame dollar. But I can’t exactly say I was looking forward to photographing it. Coins have varying degrees of convex and concave shapes to them, but obviously not as extreme as these coins. The reflective surfaces sure don’t help either. At first I felt these coins would be a giant pain like the other bane of my numismatic-photographic existence: the brilliant proof Mercury Dime. But now I feel I have a handle on a technique that is fairly consistent. Here are some examples and some tips on photographing the Hall of Fame Commemorative. This is specifically for the proof dollar, but variations of this are used for the other types.

It should be noted that I frequently place the coin to fit some of the lighting as much as I make the lighting fit the coin. When I take photos of coins, typically I view them upside-down. This takes some getting used to. Luckily for you they appear more or less right side up for this demonstration.

Figure 1

We start with the reverse. In Figure 1, the coin is lying flat on the velvet pad with our continuous light source coming in from the left. Usually I use two continuous lights, but I find the second one to be too problematic for these coins and you’re better off without it. Some diffusion of this light source may be necessary, particularly with the mint state versions of these coins.

Figure 2

In Figure 2, I utilized a small reflector to bounce some light on the bottom right of the coin to define the shape a bit better.

Figure 3

In Figure 3, I included a larger reflector for the top right of the coin. I feel that this is most crucial for this coin; it seems to define the coin best, and does the most work for the image as a whole. There are risks, however. Colors can become inconsistent with this technique (compare the slight color change between 1 and 3), and there are more objects around the coin. Please take extra caution.

Figure 4

Figure 5

In Figure 4, you can see the inherent problems with the concave nature of the coin. You can clearly see my reflection and the hot light source in the surfaces. What I do next is completely counterintuitive to how I normally work: I tilt the velvet pad into the light source so that hot-spot goes into the mitt itself, and I turn the coin so where the highlights are the least invasive (Figure 5). Obviously, this technique will not necessarily work with a slabbed coin due to the glare in the plastic.

Figure 6

In Figure 6, I finish off the image with a reflector to define the mitt a bit better.

Figure 7

Make color corrections and crop as necessary (Figure 7). And there you have it! It’s just that simple! Well, not exactly. It will still be a struggle to not have your reflection in the obverse, and highlights will be difficult to deal with. But this should give you a general idea of how I’ve dealt with these coins so far.