Photography tested...

I got good feedback from you all and I did rented two macro lens from borrowlenses.com...

Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 IS Macro USM

Based on testing and I can't tell the different between both of them in quality of picture. Maybe EF 100mm would be good for really small area varieties to take a picture, but based on coin itself, both of them looks great. I decide to continue testing with 60mm. I will show some toned coins that turn out really good, but I didn't able to do more due to short time period rental service. However, 60mm won my attention and it's on my next list to buy. (I did bought Fotodiox Canon EOS Macro Extension Tube Set Kit for $20, but 60mm beat it by hundred miles away.)

Before I show you some of picture, I did take Tom B's advice to buy a book called, "[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Numismatic Photography 2nd edition" by author Mark Goodman. It's worth to read the book and it help me how to modify my camera and adjust light stand to get best light reflection out of coin and avoid glare on coin, too. If you considering to shoot some coins, that book is high recommend.

Here's my pictures using 60mm lens...

Kennedy
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Jefferson
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Lincoln



Upclose Kennedy Observe

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Let me know what do you think of my first true Macro lens pictures?
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Since all coins has been taken as "L" memory. I wonder what's best setting to crop it that it may show bigger picture without losing it's quality. (I have PS CS5)

 

Crop, crop, crop and focus, focus, focus..........

 

I agree with crop, that's why I am asking for help with CS5. However, for focus. I did look closer using my iphoto and it looks good, but I will wait until crop it and repost here to see if it's good.

P.S. I realized that back RTY as out focus on Kennedy.

 

I downloaded the Kennedy and was going to crop it for you when I encountered the focus issues.

 

I use photoscape and google picasa. I crop the photo down, straighten, and make color and light adjustments in Picasa, and use photoscape for some fine tuning, round cropping, and some other stuff.

Here is your image after running it through both.

 

I see, it's seem that photobucket may down quality the picture. Here's uncompressed picture...

 

It looks better, but I can see two areas as out focus. RTY and IN GOD.

 

If you are using a macro lens, the coin should fill the entire frame. That is the only way you are going to get a high quality image after its cropped and zoomed in. For the first 6 photos, simply too little of the resolution of your camera is being used to capture the coin. The last photo looks promising, although I can't tell if the quality isn't better because you had already cropped the picture, or because you had to resize it down to post on this site.

Edit - oh, you posted the answer while I was replying.

 

I'm curious Aslpride, what is the resolution of the kennedy picture, file IMG_1708_2? When you download it here, it says it is 1247 x 1871. I thought you had said you were using a Canon DSLR, which if you were, that number should be considerably higher.

Also, what F-Stop are you using?

 

I just got a Canon EOS Rebel T4i camera this weekend and when looking at which macro lens to get, I was ready to go with the Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens that many have recommended in the past, but my friend who runs the camera shop suggested to buy the L-series version of that lens (the 100mm f/2.8 L IS USM macro) as it has some extra features and overall better quality and better resale. So I went with that one.

Got everything delivered and finally set up this evening. Before even hooking it up to my copy stand or before I tweaked the various camera settings I thought it would be interesting to take a few shots freehand w/o making any adjustments at all to see what sort of shots I could get. So, here's the first coin I imaged using all of the camera's factory default settings and doing no editing to the photos at all other than to resize the images to 25% of their original size. The third shot is a crop of the date in full size.





I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the images. Sure, they are far from perfection, but multiple times better than I have ever done with my old point and shoot camera. I also think it was a pretty clear image considering I was shooting it with the camera in my hands so seemingly the autofocus and the image stabilization in this lens works pretty well. Now seeing what this can do with the factory default settings freehand, I can't wait to get it hooked to the copy stand and play around with the settings. Still not sure if the L-series version of the 100mm macro lens was really worth twice the price but I'm taking my friend's word that it is

 

vtvick777: I did check my setting on Canon t1i and I found out that I set focus position at center only. I think it is main reason for blur on RTY and IN GOD. I think it should be set as full spread focus position. I will practice after buy 60mm lens.

To reply your second comment, I add image with original setting of Kennedy's close up image. I can determine that photobucket and upload image here do actually compressed the image to lower quality.

 

illini420: I agree with you that Canon 100mm Macro L f/2.8 give superior quality, but budget wise for me. I would go for 60mm lens. Thank you for share your snapshot. You can see some off focus on my picture and I know it's not based on camera motion because it was connect with tripod and remote control to ensure it will not shake. I think it's setting that I need to practice more.

 

I don't think focus is the issue here. The coin isn't parallel to the camera, and you don't have enough depth of field at f2.8 to compensate.

 

I agree. Try f8 with the coin flat to the lens.

 

Actually the opposite is true with a dedicated macro lens. With a 100mm macro lens shooting a Morgan dollar the distance between the coin and lens is close to 12", less with a 60mm and about 18" with a 180mm lens.

The opposite it the case with a macro capable point and shoot where the distance is probably under 4-5 inches.

The real advantage of a dedicated macro lens is the ability to get better lighting on the coin because of the added distance between the subject and lens.

 

In my setup I'm using an extension tube set along with the kit lens. When I attach the extension tube, you are no longer allowed to adjust the aperture, and the space for that number just goes blank. Does anyone here have experience with that or know what is happening? Does it just use the previous setting when that happens? Is there any way to control the depth of field when an extension tube is attached?