OK photography experts...have at it....
ellewood
Posts: 1,750 ✭
First of all, let me say how blown away I am by 'cosmicdebris' pics in his registry sets. WOW. Ok. Quick question for you photography folks. I have been taking most of my pictures with an old (and I mean OLD) Sony Mavica 2.0 megapixel camera (the thing is an old camera that we have laying around at our office) with a 6X digital zoom. It's one of those "large" cameras that we picked up for our construction company. The camera has a "focus" button...which when touched...a little flower pops up on the screen & gives me a couple of options .5m, 1.0 m, 3.0m & 7.0m and then one with an infinity sign. It really doesn't matter which one of these I select, but I get away with a pretty good detailed picture (see attached picture) because it does have macro capability. Here's the problem. I have to have the camera about two or three inches away from the coin...to get a good detailed picture of JUST THE COIN. This being the case, I cannot crank much light towards the coin. In most of my photos, I have to be on an angle...so I can crank some light in.
I want to be able to put a camera on a small tripod or copy stand that I have and shoot downwards on the coin. I understand that lighting is very crucial...and I think I can experiment with that just fine....but is there a good camera out there (that is fairly cheap) that will enable me to shoot my coins (both raw and PCGS slab) WITHOUT having to put the coin 2 inches from the darn lens??? Is it all about macro lenses and getting something at least 4.0 megapixel? Any insight that you or others may have would be greatly appreciated.
Here is a photo that I took of one of my raw lincolns....with this old cam...
Now here is an example of a photo that I would LIKE TO BE ABLE TO SHOOT (courtesy of Mark Federici on eBay):
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Comments
The further away you can get from the coin the better is true. I used to have to get 2 to 3 inches from the coin with my old camera and not have much room for the lights. But now I am using a Canon Rebel Digital SLR with a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens on a Testrite CS-2 copy stand. Now the camera is about 18 inches away from the coin. As for lighting I used to use (2) regular 75 watt light bulbs but I am now using (2) 500 Watt Photoflex Starlites. I can place these lights about 4 feet from the coin and get great lighting. I now you asked for fairly inexpensive but this setup is not.
09/07/2006