Using a Built-in Flash for Coin Photography

The second entry into this ongoing work in progress. You can find other entries in menu at the left side of the blog.

Using a Camera's Built-in Flash to Light Coins

Normally, I would warn strongly against using the built-in flash on a digital camera as a light source for eBay photos. In general, such a small light source, placed so close to the camera lens, produces a flat, unflattering effect. However, coins are a bit different than most items.

For one thing, because extreme close-ups are required for coins, a built-in flash can be at a significantly different angle than the lens. This reduces the flattening effect, especially if the camera has a pop-up flash, which further increases the difference in angles.

On the other hand, most digital cameras do not do a good job of throttling down a flash for such short-range shooting. This leads to severe overexposure, especially of a highly reflective coin. Also, because of the short distance, the light fall-off from one side of the coin to the other can be too stark, leading to extremely bright and extremely dark areas.

You may have had better luck, but the shot below of an 1892 Morgan dollar is the best I've been able to do with a built-in flash.



This was taken with a very capable camera (a Canon Digital Rebel). In order to keep from overwhelming the coin with the flash, I shot in manual exposure mode, setting a very small  lens aperture. This gave me a nice, sharp photo, but that's about the only good thing about it. As you can see, the coin is a bit too bright at the top and much too dark at the bottom. Worse, the harshness of the flash overemphasizes every tiny detail in the coin. Believe me, this coin looks better than this in real life, as you'll see in the next section.