Wanna see my unbox my latest newp?

(This thread may be slightly off-topic initially, but should become coin-related fairly soon.)

Other people have posted "unboxing" threads like this, so I thought I'd have fun with it.

Uh-oh. Some bozo who took these pictures had his big fat finger near the cellphone camera lens, causing some "ghosting" near the edge of the picture. Some of the subsequent pictures are worse. Sorry.

I really should do something about my photography.

 

Oh, hey, look. It's a fifty-year-old Bausch & Lomb microscope case.

(No, there isn't a microscope inside.)

 

Nope!

 

There isn't.

You're seeing a microscope stand.

 

Like I said in the first post, it is high time I worked on my photography.

Procrastinated over getting the right kind of equipment for a decade. No longer!

First coin photos will follow sometime tomorrow.

 

Yep. I'll post my first pix tomorrow.

I got this setup from Ray Parkhurst, aka "rmpsrpms" on Collectors Universe. I don't know if he posts here, but I've seen him mentioned in a thread or two here. He is a die variety guy, and posts some crazy microphotographs of repunched mintmarks and such.

But since I am not a die variety guy, and just needed a general coin photography setup, I had him put this together for me. I believe it is similar to his System 1 on the website.

Camera: $175 (low shutter count Canon Rebel XS with battery, charger, USB cable, tethering and editing software)
Stand: $225 (System-1)
Bellows: $135 (Novoflex)
Full-Coin Lens: $85 (Nikon 75mm EL-Nikkor)
Diffuser: $35 (general use as shown in System-2)
Lights: $50/pair (Jansjo LEDs modified for first-level diffusion)
Carrying Case: $75
Shipping: (to my location, CA to GA) $60

Total cost: $860.
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Did I overpay for any of this stuff? Who knows. Not me. ($75 seems a bit steep for the old microscope case, but hey, it fits, and it's sturdy and usable. That was something he found.)

Since I'm starting from a position of ignorance here, I figured I would rather have somebody put the whole system together for me rather than try to figure out what I needed on my own, by trial and error. I may have paid more, but if I can get this rig working and taking decent photos right out of the box, it'll be worth the expense.

(We'll worry about adequate photos first. I'm sure good will take practice.)

 

I got tired of waiting and trying to figure out this stuff on my own. Also, I never could fully justify the expense of a dSLR camera when I did marginal-but-acceptable work with a point-and-shoot. (And I used a scanner for years! A nice scanner, to be sure, but still a scanner.)

But I got frustrated and knew I would never get any higher up the learning curve until I upgraded my equipment.

So now I have.

Over time, if I get good enough, the expense will be forgotten and this will pay for itself.

 

Mark Goodman was kind enough to send me a signed copy a few years ago. At the time, I could only get so far with it due to the limitations of my equipment.

You can rest assured that I will be rereading it. Thanks.

 

OK, it's time to make this thread coin-related!

Here is not my very first photo with the new camera (that was an accidental shot of the stage plate, and all black), nor my second (that was a blurry whitish disc).

But the obverse and reverse of this coin are my third and fourth photos ever with the new camera.

I was (and still am) fumbling through the software and all the bewildering symbols and icons, so I consider it encouraging that I was able to make the camera take a picture at all at this point!

I wanted to pick a "lucky" coin for my first photos, and since I never had any decent pix of this one, I thought I'd try it. What more lucky than a metal detecting find?

This ca. 1300-1310 Long Cross silver penny of Edward I "Longshanks" was the first coin I found on my 2013 metal detecting trip to England.

The pictures are just... OK. Considering my utter inexperience, I'm pleased with how they turned out.

The lighting could have been better, as could the focus. But this is an adequate set of images, I think.

I do like using the microscope stand's wheels to adjust the rough focus, with the wheels for the bellows adjusting the finer focus.

If a complete newb like me can produce something like this on only the third and fourth tries, I think this might just work out nicely in the long run!

First, the merged obverse-reverse images, in my standard 800x400 layout I use for raw coins. Then the larger 800x800 individual sides. The raw index images were of course much larger.

I cropped and resized these images using MS Paint, which is the photo editing software I'm most familiar with at this point. But that is the only editing done here.

The rest is just as it came off the camera. No tweaking of color, white balance, etc. (I still have no clue how to do all that yet.)