Nope, it's just that we have a jar of copper coins and don't have a jar of pound coins :)

The background cloth is velvet which doesn't reflect which makes life easier. I also fired the flash upwards so that the light was even as a bounced off the ceiling.

Once I'd taken the shot, I took it into CaptureNX2 and moved the black point of the curves tool to the right to ensure that it was all a single tone. The cloth is also fairly clean, so I just had to clone out a two small of bits of fluff on the right.

Regards,

Rob...

One thing I noticed, it's immaculately clean!

Just out of curiosity, how did you get the background so completely and utterly black, without any reflections, textures or the ubiquitous "curly hair" or specks of dandruff that I find littering most photos not taken in a studio?

Was it with superbly adjusted exposure or post processing?

Rob...

I have G to thank for the nice velvet background :)

Greg,

I suspect that every picture I took at 10:15 would be of my computer! Everyone else clearly has a less boring life, or more imagination than me!

I could probably do "Same Sky, Different Places" though as I like looking at clouds.

Rob...

There's also a "Same Sky, Different Places" group on Flickr that I did add a couple of pics to. Most of them are from the group creator, who is just about to end a year of taking sky-pictures every single day - less effort required to choose a subject!

C