FA: Coin Photography Setup...Turnkey

rmpsrpms

I'm offering a coin photography setup on eBay. It includes lenses, bellows, copy stand, and camera for $650 starting bid. Take a look at:

Coin Photography Setup

I also offer custom-built setups, lenses, bellows, fine-adjust copy stands, etc. PM me with your needs...Ray

knoxy4

Sorry I don't know how to PM here? But I have an XS body and the canon 100mm 2.8 macro lens and was hoping to make a bellows or extension tubes as my next purchase. Do you have any recommendations? Are you upgrading and hoping for better images? What were the shortfalls, if any, of the XS body?

Thanks in advance and sorry again for my ignorance

rmpsrpms

The XS is a fine body for coins, no upgrade needed. It has Live View, EFSC, and uses the same tethering software as later bodies. It can produce superb coin photos.

Your 100mm lens is also excellent. If you can mount the camera to a nice, rigid copy stand you can take great photos with it.

The advantage you will have with a bellows system is that you can select lenses that are physically small and have a wide range of working distances and magnifications. The smaller lenses let you get your lights in at very high angles. Your 100mm lens actually shortens its focal length at higher magnifications, so it's effectively only a ~60mm lens at 1:1. This makes the working distance very short, and combined with the lens' large diameter makes it hard to get light in at high angles on smaller coins. For Dollars, the lens can't be beat, but for Nickels or smaller coins, it's better to have either a longer macro lens (like 150mm) or to use bellows lenses that maintain their focal length regardless of magnification.

If you want to go the bellows route, I'd recommend getting essentially the same equipment I have for sale on eBay (Canon Auto Bellows and outfitting either a Nikon 80mm or 105mm EL-Nikkor). This is a good combo for performance/price ratio. If you want to go beyond 2:1, I'd recommend either Nikon 4x Plan 0.1 or Nikon M5 0.1 Microscope objectives. You will of course need appropriate adapters for the lenses and the camera. There are lots of other bellows and lens options, and we can discuss further if you want to know the tradeoffs in cost, functionality, and image quality. And if desired I can supply the bellows, lens(es) and stand that you decide on if you want to go that way.

Ray

knoxy4

Wow. I have some homework to do! Thanks for the response. As of yet my set up consists of the XS and macro lens. I mount them on my tripod with goose neck little desk lamp things that I clip onto the tripod. I've not even heard about the features that you mentioned my camera already has let alone know how to use them. :-/

Thanks very much for your input and I will try and get my ducks in a row with what I already have before I move on to a more advanced system.