What kind of camera equipment do you all use for coin photography? I haven't started yet, but I do do photography as a hobby (http://www.jesh.com/travcoa08/fav/ from my most recent 2 week trip in equador (including galapagos islands), and peru/machu picchu). I ordered a book which seems to be recommended by all: Numismatic Photography My Equipment: Canon EOS 40d and Canon EOS 30d, Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM Lens, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Lens, and the one I think that will be used the most for numismatic photography is the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens. Also a Canon Speedlite 580EX II. I also have three or four of the compact cameras (e.g. Powershots). Going to take a look at the book to see what they recommend, but I think I will be picking up a cloud dome infinity board too. Greg
you are on the right track encil: Hi Greg: Welcome to the forum!! By getting the Numismatic Photography Book, you have got a GREAT resource and a good start. You have a good selection of Canon equipment. I would recommend that you get desktop tripod that you can do top down shots. You also need to get some lights. You will find many different thoughts on what lights are best. The main thing, in my opinion is color temp. you shoudl get lights that havea temperature range of 5000 - 5600 kevins. You may want to gt some some diffusion capabilty as well. Best advice is to practice and post shots here for comments. You will find the members to be very knowledgeable and helpful. Right now I am using a CAnon S3IS and am just getting started in this myself!! G.E.
Yeah I have access to the lights. A good friend of mine does photography for major companies (e.g. budweiser, four seasons, miller, etc etc). The good thing is I shoot in RAW mode, and use Photoshop and Lightroom extensively. Lightroom especially is great for color temp. (e.g. check out the link I posted of the south america shots).
I have an OLympus E300, I am not good at using it, and I have this thin red Casio thing, says 5 Megapixels... both are a few years old. Olympus is a good camera, cost a few coins. I take bad pics with it. Casio was a couple hundred if memory serves, I take great pics with it, for me.
I made a light diffuser out of a milk jug that I use occasionally. My camera is a Canon G9 and I sometimes use a QX3 for closeups. I do macro, flash off (Unless I use my light diffuser.) and use a GE Reveal bulb with side lighting. (Works great for toned coins.) And I take some pics on my windowsill for natural light. And I use MiXscope for using my QX3 with mac. The Canon G9 is 12.1 Megapixels and I use a weird little tripod that I picked up for 10 bucks. Thats not my picture of the tripod obviously because it does not snow in Florida. The G9 also shoots in RAW. (MASSIVE file size though.)
FreakyGarrettC, I saw you said you use the QX3 with MAC. I have been thinking about this rig -- Does it work well -- any software or hardware compatibility issues? Do you have some pics of where you have used it with the MAC. What is MixScope? Will it read directly into iPhoto? Where did you get the QX3?? Thanks for answering my rambling questions. John
http://www.edhsw.com/mixscope/ My avatar was taking using this software. The qx3 you can buy on ebay. And my space key is about to fall off my keyboard. :goof: The software is 15 bucks. The MiXscope software works great. Try the demo.
I'm using a Canon Rebel SLR with a Sigma 150 macro. It's a great system but needs to be mounted on a really heavy duty copy stand. I do remote shoot. That lets me make camera settings and take the image on the pc using the mouse. What's really cool about this is being able to see the image as soon as it's taken on the pc monitor. This is so much faster than loading a card of images to the pc and having to go back to the camera to get a better one of something.
I use a Sony Cybershot. I'm still practicing with it. I took some photos of my coins and put them in my photo album here but became frustrated with it and took them all off.
