Taking Pictures of Coins

Easy does it.......There are some of us out here that just want to take decent images of coins to sell on eBay. I'm not wanting to spend "big-bucks" for a set up. Any thoughts to solve via the USB microscope path? I'm wanting to be completely transparent on eBay. I just get so frustrated with images on eBay of coins that I can't pull out the high AND low aspects of the particular coin.....Gerrrrr! Ok, now some advise....Pleeeeeease?

 

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What do you define as "big bucks?" I use an $84 camera with a $35 lens.

 

SuperDave - Thanks for the reply. "$84 camera with a $35 lens" is not big bucks to me....just about right. What is the camera? What is the lens? And....how do you set up? Again.....I appreciate your time replying to me post - Fred

 

I know I haven't with my USB microscope

 

Pretty sure that Alan has told me in that past that the one he sells will do this.

@coinzip ?

Edit #1: this post had one.


Edit #2: as did this post

 

There is a great difference between taking pictures of silver coins or bronze coins.
Light makes a great difference. My preference is to take pictures under natural light. Avoid direct sun light (too yellow), insufficient light (silver turns blue).You must turn the coin around and orient it to find the best exposure, portrait show more relief when facing the source of light. Bronze coins are more complicated : it is difficult to capture the actual color of a patina. Some programs enable corrections: Microsoft "modify image" in the Office program is easy to handle. In conclusion, it is all a matter of patience, trial and errors to reach satisfactory results. The "macro" device on cameras is useful to approach coins of small dimension.

 

A lighting tent will give the best conditions for macro.

FotodioX LED Studio-in-a-Box (24 x 24") $99 from B&H Photo.

Use a tripod, remote shutter or timer.

 

There's a little bit more to it than just camera and lens, but the remaining pieces - if you wish to assemble them that way - are not expensive either. This is what my rig looks like, although neither the camera nor lens shown are still present ( ):



It's a dSLR camera mounted on a bellows, with a common used film duplicating lens. My current camera is a Canon Rebel XS, bought used from Adorama for $84. The lens I mentioned is a Nikon El-Nikkor 75mm, which can be had from Ebay for less than $40. For smaller coins I use a more-sophisticated Schneider-Kreuznach Componon-S 50mm which cost me a whole $65. The Nikon will shoot the same coins, but the Schneider is the better lens although it won't shoot anything larger than a Quarter. I shot the Conder above with the Nikon.

The bellows can be found for $40-ish, and you'll likely need to budget for $10 adapters on each end - camera-bellows and lens-bellows - unless you're lucky with the bellows and lens purchases and come up with pieces designed to work together.

The stand you see was custom-built for me by @rmpsrpms, and doesn't fall into the category of "cheap," but you can substitute a cheap tripod and the corner of a table.

What you get, for that, is the ability to shoot professional-quality images the equal of anyone's. You can use these lenses through a variety of magnifications; that's the purpose of the bellows. The longer you extend it, the greater the magnification. Here's a coin shot with the Schneider:



This is a 100% crop of that image, showing the actual size of the original, as I have to size them down by half to post here:



Then I increased the magnification (there's more where that came from) to shoot this with the same lens:



With the included remote shooting software, I control all aspects of the shoot from mouse and keyboard, and focus the shot on my monitor in real time and at full size, meaning I never get focus wrong.

For lighting, I usually use two Jansjo LED gooseneck lamps, $10 each at Ikea, sometimes with and sometimes without a little diffusion to take the edge off of the highlights. Color Temperature doesn't really matter as long as all your lighting matches; with a dSLR (and many good point-and-shoot cameras) you can color-correct in the camera.

The tradeoff: It requires substantial intellectual investment to learn. You will need to acquire command of all aspects of the photographic process, because there's nothing "automatic" about it.

 

Here are a couple pics using a Celstron hand held digital scope. I modified the stand so I could get a whole Morgan in the frame. It takes great pics for closer shots if you monkey with the lighting. The larger pics get a little muddy/fuzzy toward the center of the coin. I consider these picture adequate for what I needed, but now I want better. I'm working on a setup similar to Dave's. Hoping Santa gets me what I need this x-mas I'm a SuperDave groupie, Dave, you put out some great and very helpful info! Merry Christmas ALL!

 

Those aren't exactly terrible results.

You've insufficient depth of field to shoot the whole surface - note in the full-face image the breast is out of focus. Do you have an aperture setting on that 'scope? You could squeeze more DoF out by numerically increasing (physically narrowing) the aperture.

 

Yep, I had alter the stand to get a large dollar in the field. It does pretty good with halves and smaller. I also have a AMScope with camera, but the field of view is so limited....but really comes in handy for the scribbles on the 21's and stuff like that...

 

If you're focusing manually, and can therefore alter the focus point, explore z-stacking. It allows you to combine multiple images, focused at different levels, in software into one sharply-focused whole and thereby overcome insufficient depth of field.

 

Wow...That's an awesome setup SuperDave...

 

The original post asked about taking pictures with an iPhone. I couldn't find this thread when I started looking into that recently. Instead, I posted in the "Post your coin photography set-up" thread, https://www.cointalk.com/threads/post-your-coin-photography-set-up.229658/page-6#post-2594586. My "setup" is discussed over there.

@SuperDave, @rmpsrpms, and @robec have been very helpful. The closest focus of the iPhone lens is about 4", so a cent occupies only a small part of the field. You can zoom in, but that is a digital zoom using resampling of the image, and not a physical zoom like you get with the bellows.

At the moment I am using an app called Camera+ which gives control over white balance, focus area, and the spot to use for determining exposure. Camera+ has a setting called Macro, which is a 2x digital zoom upsampled from the native resolution. It makes the image large enough to place the exposure setting directly over the coin, so it does not get overexposed (which can happen because the background is black, and the auto-exposure will try to raise the entire exposure higher to try to brighten up that black).

If I shoot at native resolution the background is always gray instead of black because the exposure tries to brighten it up. However the colors seem more nuanced, so I may need to work at that to get the deep black background.

The first image is without zoom, the second is using the Macro setting (2x in-camera digital zoom). I would like to have the black background of the second with the smoother colors of the first. However, you can see the highlights are also blown out on the left image, because the camera is working with a larger area, much of which is black, to determine exposure.

 

Very nice Ron! What a difference, nice 31S too, I'm very jealous!

 

Thank you. I'm very lucky on this eBay purchase.

For some reason the seller used the word "Details" in the title ("1931-S 1C, Mint State Details, RB, BU++, A Must See, Awesome, Key Date"). I think that scared off other bidders who thought that meant the coin would get a Details grade - but really the seller meant that the details of the coin were spectacular.

I was the only bidder.

Here was his picture. I cropped it down to discard some extra background.


As @SuperDave said in another post, taking your own pictures really helps you see the coin through someone else's photos, even (or especially) when they have problems.

I hope you find some similar luck!

 

Thanks Ron, I'm getting there with all the great info from you guys! Merry Christmas!

 

WOW! @@SuperDave, @@rmpsrpms, and @@robec .... especially SuperDave - you guys ROCK! Thank you for all the info - Images - Details. I have come to REALLY appreciate all the professionalism and integrity here on CoinTalk. Thanks, guys. Oh....and Merry Christmas and wishes for a great New Year in 2017! - Fred

 

GALAXY S9 HELP: I know nothing about cameras (ISO, shutter speed, F-stuff, lighting, use or not use a flash, etc.) and taking good coin pics.

Right now I am taking my coin pics using a Galaxy S9....Selective Focus.....and then let the S9 defaults take over.

If anybody has any suggestions to change the settings or create a COIN SETTINGS on the S9 that I can store the settings in memory, let me know. Or maybe the PRO or even FOOD settings are better than SELECTIVE FOCUS ?

Details on the pics I have taken lately include: For Full Slab Pics: No Flash.....Aperture @ 1.5..,.Focal Length @ 4.30 mm.....White Balance @ Auto.....ISO @ 125......Exposure Time 1/60th sec.

For Coin Only (zoom in): ISO @ 320 and Exposure 1/30th sec., all else the same.

 

Yup.....what settings to use on a smarpthone, what angle to have the coin at, what kind of overhead lighting to have (might have to rely on basic house lights), etc.

If anybody has some tips -- esp. for a Galaxy S9 or similar phone -- I'm all ears.