Sharpness is nice, but a little distorted. I'm sure the color is off a tad as well. I think your 110mm is capable of a lot more if my 100mm can do this... ... I just need to work on the depth-of-field. What camera are you using? -Brian
D300 is a good camera. I'm still trying to get the hang of the Canon Rebel T3. It's a lot more advanced and more complicated than I expected, but I'll get the hang of it eventually. I'm enjoying the accurancy-of-color compared to my Nikon, but the depth-of-field is a little trickier (as mentioned before). I'm eventually going to have to adjust the resolution as well. I'm not too sure what it's set at now, but I'm having serious trouble uploading due to large file size. These images you're seeing are actually better quality, but the imaging-hosting site distorts them as well as CT requiring me to resize in order to upload to the thread. -Brian
Most USA coins are very well lit with lights at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. I personally also add a light at 12 o'clock for some filler light and to avoid dark areas of the coin. Also, for exposure, make sure your camera is set to spot metering or center weighted. For coin photography you want the middle of the picture properly exposed, and usually don't care about the white sheet of paper, black sheet of paper, or the slab exposure. Here's one I took last night with my lights. Keep practicing -- that really is the best way to perfect your pics. -Brandon
Good advice! One question, though - How do you get the depth-of-field evenly distributed? Notice in my photo of the 1894 IHC of how upper-left and center of the coin are seen clearly, while the date and low-right are blurry. How do I fix this? That's what's really bumming me out. Also, if you don't mind sharing, what image-hosting website would you use or would recommend? I'm having trouble simply uploading my images to CT and other websites. -Brian
Oh wow thats a beautiful picture that black ground makes it pop i was thinking about building a light tent this weekend and using either a gray or black background One other thing is that coin in a holder or are you shooting the coin standing up ?
Are you shooting with a tripod or a copy stand? If you're using the Canon T3 you have a very nice camera. All of my recent shots are taken with a Canon T2i. To get what you call an "evenly distributed" depth of field you have to make sure that the plane of the camera sensor (the little rectangle at the back of the lens that captures the image) is exactly parallel to the coin surface. One clever way to do that (that I learned from someone else) is to use a very small mirror. Process: Place your coin on the table and frame it in the viewfinder and focus on it. Then, move the coin and place a small mirror on the flat surface in it's place. Now, using the LiveView mode of your T3, see if the middle of your lens is exactly in the middle of your viewfinder. You should be able to see the reflection of your lens in the mirror -- position the middle of your lens reflection in exactly the middle of your viewfinder and that will guarantee that the two planes are perfectly parallel (the sensor and the flat surface you're shooting on). Another thing I wonder is what f/stop you are using. Almost all coin images should be shot in the f/5.6 to f/11 range (not smaller and not larger). This is the optimal range for most macro lenses to maintain sharpness and decent depth of field. Does this make sense? If not I can try to explain a bit better.
I use photobucket if I'm actually uploading them somewhere, otherwise I just upload them directly from my computer to CT. In general, there is no reason why a picture of a coin posted on the web needs to be larger than 800 pixels by 800 pixels. Thus, I use GIMP (free photo editing software) or Adobe Photoshop (not free) to crop the coin circularly onto a black or white background, and then resize it to 800x800 pixels or smaller. This resize requires a tiny amount of sharpening after the resize, but don't overdo it. If you size your coin images to this, then you won't run into upload file limitations. I gave a "tutorial" of how to use GIMP on another site, which you can find here. I hope this helps.
I'm using a two-light copy stand. I've been reading the instructions disk and manual provided with the camera, and I'm trying to figure out how I should adjust the metering, which I think may be one of many problems I'm facing. From what little I've read, I should have my camera w/ macro lens set on "partial metering" which is "effective when the background is much lighter than the subject due to backlighting". So, if I'm using a piece of white printer paper, it'd only make sense that I have it on this setting, right? As you may be able to tell by now, I've never worked with a Canon and I've done very little with Nikons. I've come to realize that this Canon is complicated for a novice like myself. -Brian
I shoot on partial metering, but I didn't mention that setting originally because Nikons don't have it. Canon's have center weighted and partial metering, which are very similar. Nikons have center weighted only I believe. I'm not a Nikon guy myself, so can't answer that for sure.
Here is your newest 1884 pic with some post processing. It's a nice image. You are on the right track! Keep practicing! -Brandon
I adjusted the aperture to 8.0 to fix the depth-of-field issue. I also switched to "partial metering" (I think), flipped a switch on the macro lens to "AF" (which probably stands for "auto focus") and flipped another switch to "0.31m to infinity" instead of "0.48m to infinity". I'm not sure if it worked, though. How does this look? ... And sorry if I'm dragging this thread out too long. Thanks again for all of the help, guys. -Brian
