I finally got a copy stand so I can no longer use that as an excuse for my coin photography. Below are two photos I took of an Andrew Jackson First Spouse coin using the copy stand and two desk lamps (located at 3:00 & 11:00). The lamps each have a 60w GE Reveal bulb and I placed a sheet of velum in front of each lamp for light diffusion. Comments?
Nice images, Hobo! I'm looking for a copy stand sturdy enough to hold a Nikon D-40 with a Nikkor 105 macro. What kind are you using?
I bought a Testrite CS-2. (I guess CS stands for Copy Stand.) Testrite no longer makes copy stands. They discontinued them a year or two ago. Too bad because it is a GREAT copy stand. I was patient and finally found one new in the box on eBay. The CS-2 is plenty sturdy for my Nikon D300 w/ Sigma 105mm Macro lens. The D40 is a good bit lighter than the D300 so it would be fine for your D40. The CS-2 does not have a micro-adjust feature for the carriage. I'm gonna look around and see if there is something with this feature that I can mount to the carriage and that the camera can then mount to. The CS-2 has a 36" bar. I hope that is tall enough for photographing larger items. I have no idea what the limitations are with a 105mm lens as I have only set the copy stand up and taken a few test shots. I am sure, though, that I will be very satisfied with this copy stand.
I have a D40x with the Sigma 150mm macro (which is a fairly heavy lens indeed), and I have a big, heavy-duty old 40-inch Olympus copy stand that I got from eBay. Since that's not the kind of thing you're likely to see come up that often, I would say that most any 36-inch or so copy stand should be more than up to the task of holding your camera. Make sure it has a nice, big base (or if you're attaching a column to your own base, make it a big'un) and be careful not to jiggle it if you have the camera anywhere near the top of the column.
I used Photoshop Elements to crop the pic and replace the background with black. Then I used Irfanview to compress the file to a size that I can upload here.
Where can you get Irfanview and what does it cost? Why not reduce the size of the image with photoshop?
I've used Irfanview for years and I use it whenever I need to compress a file. It's free at www.irfanview.com.
the pics are nice but they dont give a true rep f the coin. the coin looks much better in hand. maybe u can capture the brilliant look of the coin somehow.
Having a copy stand is a great way to take coin images. I bought just the 36'' post from B&H Photo and made the base to fit the table I was using. With a Sigma 150 Macro I'm on my toes imaging 3'' medals but anything smaller is really easy. A good stand with an SLR and a macro lens takes away much of the learning curve of taking nice images. It's also really helpful to have software that will let you remote shoot. I'm using what came with a Canon Rebel. Once you focus the camera you do everything including the settings at the PC using the mouse. Not having to touch the camera to take the shot is a good thing. Once the image is shot it comes up on the PC. This saves a lot of time. It helped me to take notes on how each image was shot till I learned what worked best for each type of coin. No matter how good you get there is always that coin that takes 50 images to catch the real look.:crying:
Nice pics for sure, just a couple things...the lighting seems a bit weak and I much prefer a true, natual, pure white background for coin pics so I can determine the white balance. It's just too easy to alter the color representation with lighting and image editing, those can easily skew the true color of the coin. As a viewer, a white background gives me a better idea of the settings used.
