Pictures of Coins

Coins101

Ok, I have seen all, well most, of the great, fantastic and outstanding pictures of the coins you all have taken and post on here.

How about giving up a few of your secrets? What do you use for lighting? I have a Nikon SLR 35mm w/ a 55mm macro/PK ring which give me a near 1 to 1 ratio but would rather use my Nikon 990 (which has IMOP a great macro setting). The light is my biggest concern.

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated!!!

relayer

A good starting point

airplanenut

Use the 990--first off, it's a great camera (I have the later model 4500). Secondly, you'll need a LOT of practice. Why just last week, I took 300 pictures, and have taken nearly 4300 sicne I got my camera last May--you don't want to pay to develop those.

Jeremy

mgoodm3

What Jeremy said. Gotta take a lot of pics. I'm up to about 3800 on my new camera. I use 2 or 3 lights, tensor desk lamps (small ones to fit in tight spaces. I will use varying amounts of regular printer paper to diffuse the lights. Then, it's trial and error (more error). Make sure you have the right white balance setting (use the manual one where the camera measures it if available) for the lighting that you are using.

Also get an AC converter for you camera if you don't have one. Allows a lot longer shooting time. Use the self-timer feature if using a copy stand or tripod (motion is the killer).

For shooting, I use the aperture priority mode. It allows me to use a higher aperture setting which increases the depth of focus. The camera likes to focus on the front of the slab which is a bit in front of the coin. At close range you don't have a lot of focus depth. The manual focus on my camera (Nikon 5400) is almost useless.

This is what I am using at the moment. I angle the camera about 15 or 20 degrees toward the coin. At close range it gets the coin out from under the camera and allows better lighting. I am using one light at high angle with paper over it to diffuse the light (lights up the fields and relief). Two lights are at a lower angle which provide shadowing and luster. I use a copy stand for holding the camera still and close to the coin.

I have a black sock over the camera with strategic holes in it to cut down on reflections off the camera and also off the head of the copy stand. Little chrome bits can create some interesting artifacts on pics.

Keep the camera close to the computer so you don't have to detach it to download the pics.

Coins101

Hey, BIG THANKS to you guys (relayer, airplanenut & mgoodm3). It is REALLY nice of you to share your tips and experiences. relayer, the link is great.

Hopefully, I will be posting a few pixs in the near future.

Thanks again.
BobH

mrdq

Skip the camera and the copystand and the lights.

I bought a camera, copsystand and the lights then one day I dropped a coin on my $100 HP scanjet 3570c scanner and got all these nice pics (this is my halfdime page)


with 1/10th the hassle.

If you're already a PHOTO nut then camera's are great but for low cost great pics the scanner works great for me. I'm sure the adjustments possible are INFINATELY more available with the camera but if it's money you don't have a lot of and quality you're not super worried about new scanners beat camera investments hands down

nOoBiEeE

I got some nice tips from this link... Link