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New Coin Variety Microscope

My original reason (12 years ago...) for coin photography was to shoot variety details. In my own system that is still the primary reason, though I also shoot full-coin photos, especially toners and gems I find if OBW rolls. A few folks share the same goals, and I've built a handful of systems over the years that are optimized for details shots. Recently I was contactd by a variety researcher contacted me to build a system to shoot details, and I decided to use some new methods I have been researching, including single-clamp Arca mounting (ie my "System-H" as shown here:

https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/comment/13259381#Comment_13259381

I integrated a rotating-diffuser ringlighting into the single clamp, and the result is the "Coin Variety Microscope" shown below.

This post is mostly for information and to show off my new system creation since I don't expect many folks to be interested in such a system. The ones I've sold so far have been to folks shooting images for online variety research websites, and there are not many of those around, but System-H uses the same principles for full-coin imaging.

Anyway here's the Coin Variety Microscope:

Here are a couple pics taken with the scope:

PM me for coin photography equipment, or visit my website:

http://macrocoins.com

Comments

  • Namvet69Namvet69 Posts: 8,624 ✭✭✭✭✭

    We like show and tell. Nice set up. And the pics are impressive. Peace Roy

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  • rmpsrpmsrmpsrpms Posts: 1,817 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thanks! This is the best "single image" quality I've been able to put together. Most published images of varieties were taken with compound microscopes, and the depth of field is poor. For my own images I use focus stacking, but this is a huge amount more work for each image. As a compromise for this system, I combined a low power compound objective with a 2x teleconverter to improve the depth of field without giving up too much image quality. Even so, you can see the limitations of this method in some fuzziness in field on the right side of the BIE photo. Any further improvement in depth of field would reduce the overall image quality.

    PM me for coin photography equipment, or visit my website:

    http://macrocoins.com
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