You have $400 to buy a camera setup for taking coin pictures. What do you buy?
SilverEagles92
Posts: 6,787 ✭
I'm just talking the camera body and maybe a lense here. Assume you (for whatever reason) already have enough lights and a copystand.
What do you buy?
What do you buy?
0
Comments
Or maybe it's just LeeG who can capture those excellent images
To support LordM's European Trip, click here!
example
These were taken with the addition of a Pentax 100mm Macro lens:
Get a point and shoot until you have more to spend on imaging equipment is my advice.
Not that this is a great shakes pic but I took this with a $200.00 camera yesterday before Mark's book arrived. WIth time and study I'm sure you'd do lots better.
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
Megapixel numbers are overrated and oversold. Especially for posting pictures on the internet. You simply don't need many thousands of pixels in an image to display on a monitor which is only one thousand pixels across.
If you are that concerned about quality, save up even more and go the SLR route. I would suggest you do this only when you feel you have exceeded the capacity of a lesser, cheaper camera.
Take a look at LeeG's photos. You won't get that quality unless you light the coin right. But the camera seems perfectly capable, doesn't it?
They're in my, ahem, in my collection.
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
Decide what you want the camera body to do, then pick one. Do you want an SLR w/removable lenses? Probably. How about mirror lock up, manual white balance, manual exposure, multiple image file formats (RAW, JPG, etc.)? Are you going to use the camera for normal photos or just coins?
Resolution of the CCD (“megapixels”) describes how much detail of the lens’ image will be recorded. Larger values = better CCD resolution. 32 meg will approximate the image capture resolution of a piece of 35mm color film, but you don’t want to mortgage the house to buy a camera body.
Get the least expensive body you can that does the job, and put most of the money into the lens – preferably a Canon or Nikon 105mm macro. (Don’t buy anything with a shorter focal length – you won’t have room to properly light your coins.)
For a SLR I'd go with a Nikon D200 body but you'd need a budget of $650 to secure a pre-owned body.
As for what you can do with a 4500, here's a shot that I took with it shortly before I upgraded:
...and full size (after being cropped, of course).
The size difference between a 4 and 5 MP camera isn't too huge, and I'd be much more focused on its macro ability. A big shot taken from far away might make the coin smaller than a smaller overall shot where the focus lets the coin be a much larger portion of the frame.