Closeups of Coins (pics)

What do you use to take awesome, really really closeup pics of your coins?

I bought a cheap (49.95) "usb microscope" that doesn't really cut the mustard, so I'm curious as to what you guys use to take really sharp really close pics of your coins.

Thanks.

 

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I bought this about 6 years ago when they were much more expensive than they are now. Eventually, I will replace it with a trinocular stereomicroscope.

Chris

 

what's the magnification on that?

 

I use a scanner @ 400dpi.

 

just been looking around and saw plenty from like 20X to 80X and was kinda wondering if those would be sufficient to take really close up pics

 

this Canon 40D and Canon 100mm Macro lens setup






produces this:

 

So you have a SLR camera hook up with macro lens? Wow! Pics look good too.

 

Did you click on the coins until full expansion? You can clearly see machine doubling in the word TRUST on the obverse.

and its tethered to the computer. the coin under the lens in that pic is the coin on the monitor in the background, no poking your eyes with the microscope eye pieces or looking through tiny viewfinders and crappy 3" LCD screens!

 

Yeah, nice setup and coin /envy lol

If you don't mind my asking, how much does a setup like that cost? Oh yeah, and can you zoom into a specific area of the coin so that you can like, just get a letter or number in the frame?

I noticed the E in WE looks like more than just machine doubling, ....is it ?

 

Holy Cow, Great catch! thanks for pointing that out.. I hadn't noticed that before, then again I don't scour coins for the details. Look like I should though because that E sure looks like a repeatable type of error. I have noticed that machine doubling on the 09 VDB is very prevalent, I am too much of newb to collecting to know whether that is normal with that mint or it occurs all the time but it sure seems like Philly had a difficult time with wiggling coins when struck.

Anyways the gear is all used from eBay. I paid around $450 for Body and another $450 for the lens. The software for live viewing on a monitor is clutch.


I have my distance set for cents so that 19mm fills the frame and gives me a 2600x2600 pixel image. I can zoom in a lot closer somewhere around 100x those shots are about 50-60x by estimation

 

Thanks

I'm trying to scour all these coins my dad left me, but so far seems I'm coming up empty. But yeah, if I put one under the cheap scope I have, I look all over it, ever letter, detail, everything. That's why it's taking me so long to get through all of them. Pretty time consuming, but if you catch the right deviant then it's well worth it.

 

not sure what you use for bait to catch a deviant like this.

 

HAHA, oh hell, lmao, not THAT kind of deviant lolz!!!

 

Yeah, now if you could only keep from making this a wide-bodied thread so some of us don't have to scroll back and forth to read the text. Have you thought about resizing your photos so this doesn't happen?------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------and, yes, my microscope and camera attachment connect directly to my computer via USB so I can view the shot beforehand and produce decent size photos which prevent wide-bodied threads from occurring------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------and, they do make rubber guards that fit the contour of your eyes and slip over the eyepieces------------------------------------------------------------------and this particular microscope can zoom all the way to 200x and anywhere in between unlike some microscopes that only have a triplet of fixed magnifications (such as 10x, 20x & 40x or 20x, 40x, & 80x)---------------------------------------------------------------the advantage of the zoom capability is that there are many shots one might want somewhere in between the fixed magnifications.

Chris

 

Nikon D200, Sigma 90mm Macro lens, Nikon PK-3 extension tube:

 

You should think about maaaaaaybe trying a new browser???? Try Chrome, you will never look back.. especially, since the people here at CT don't want to fix that problem???

 

What's the mount you're using for your camera there? Works well enough to suspend thousands of dollars of camera equipment over hundreds of dollars of coins I hope?

 

This is one of my favorites because it shows the lack of depth if field one focuses on the top of the numbers, the other on the lower overdate.

 

For extreme close-ups, I shoot through the eyepiece from a broken video camera or a loupe. The depth of field (depth of focus) is very shallow but when I take my time and use a tripod, the results are decent: