How make those extremely Closeups of Coins

Go to vamworld.com, come back and say that again. I dare you.

 

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I edited in a little detail above that I forgot; I was contemplating the sensor on tpsadler's Nikon when writing it.

Let's look at this from another direction. Using that Half Dime as the example, and we'll say a nice 1500px image size that most of us could probably display all at once on our monitors, you'd be looking at an area of the coin roughly as wide as the thickness of a sheet of paper. 78 microns, ish.

 

If you look at Morgan with my setup a long way from what you are saying most varieties would be dwarfed
by that much magnification .. @SuperDave has one he could show you what I mean

 

Here is an image taken at a coin show, with a Dino-Lite, the coin is in TPG plastic.

 

Here is a Morgan that I have not done much with just set in for photo and needs a little touch up but it shows my point. You would not need magnification of a lot to make the VAM disappear in the detail

 

That's for a large denomination type .. if you had 1/2 Dime or $1 Gold piece that would be entirely different story

 

That's a pretty good photo through the slab I'm attempting to shoot a Lincoln through a slab . looks like I'm going to have to clean that slab up first .. shows all kinds of what appears to be invisible marks

 

This is a 1811 over 09 Caped Bust Dime

 

That's one case where you may want your aperture to be larger, instead of smaller. Try shooting at f/4 or f/5.6, and see if that blurs the slab marks enough to get them out of the way. You may need to pick which part of the coin you want sharpest, though, because it'll be hard to get both high and low points in focus in one shot.

Some people use "stacking" software to combine multiple exposures, so you can take one with the fields in focus, one with the lower devices, and one with the highest points, and then combine them. I haven't done this myself, but I've done similar things to blend different exposure levels.

 

While I understand what your talking about, 90% (or more) of the people out there collecting and taking photos of coins do not.

In our situation its way more time and effort than we can afford to spend on images, all the images I post are 30 second photos or less. Total time to take the photos, crop, & save is probably less than 1 min per coin. We do not have time to adjust contrast, sharpness, exposure, brightness or any of the features that can be done with post editing software. I would consider stacking programs post editing too...

@tpsadler here is a purdy Morgan for ya ..

 

Canon make this lens
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lawrence_chard/12972312114/
which is excellent, but slightly hard to use, it does a 5:1 mag close up.
Other options are to use a reverse mounted lens, using a special adaptor, but we have never tried this.

 

Only glanced at the lens for a moment and I'm pretty sure its a "Fish eye" lens.... as I stated earlier, 90% of the folks won't understand what it is, how to properly use it, and if that's not enough, the cost would probably prohibit them from even thinking about it.

If I wanted to add something to takes micro photos with a DLSR, I would probably go the bellows route. Relatively inexpensive and I've seen some amazing close-ups shot with a bellows. A good copy stand is a must for this setup, any movement of the camera will result in a blurry image.

 

The MP-E65, for coins, is akin to hunting squirrel with a cannon.

 

I'm trying to adjust my statements to the level of this particular conversation. @tpsadler's taking pictures with the aperture stopped down, which led me to believe that he's at least encountered the concept of aperture and its effect on depth of focus.

The MP-E is about the furthest thing from a fisheye lens. It zooms in on a tiny field of view. At its maximum 5x setting, you'll see a swath of your subject one-fifth as wide as your image sensor -- for a full-frame camera, that's 7.2x4.8mm, or about .3 x .2 inches. And if you don't stop down, the depth of field at that setting is 0.048 mm; focus on a hair so that its edge is sharp, and its front surface will be starting to show some blur!

Actually, I'd put the MP-E more at "99% wouldn't get much out of it", even for people who are seriously into macrophotography. I went through a pretty severe gear-head phase a while back, where I ran through several of Canon's high-end ("L") lenses. I was seriously interested in macro work, and I looked long and hard at the MP-E, but I decided it was just too specialized and too technically challenging to be worth the money to me -- even though I had a pretty big head about my photography prospects.

BTW, I agree completely with your comments about the time and effort we can afford to spend on photos. If you aren't pursuing photography for its own sake, all this specialized stuff just takes too much time away from actual collecting!

 

Hey Chris, I juss wanted to say your knowledge and replies are very helpful to me and I wanted to say thank you.1 question is there a site or store that you recommend that sells used stereo microscopes and what is a brand name or model that you would recommend to me? BwDuL

 

You're welcome!

It was 11 years ago that I made my last purchase, and so many things have changed since then. There have been so many advancements made that it is practically a new learning experience for me as well. With that said, I'm still leery of products coming from China because replacement parts are not easy to obtain.

The company that produced my old Pac-Sci scope was bought out many years ago. All I can suggest is that you Google the market for used models, but be sure to read the description carefully and make sure that it has everything you need.

Chris

 

If you are only interested in collecting your own coins there would be little purpose in spending much time with photographing them. To mention just a few reasons why photos are worth while.
1. If you are selling coins it is always good to present a real image to the person with interest.
2. Convening a thought to someone regarding Errors or Varieties. IMO There is nothing worse than a bad photo. Especially if you need an opinion or attempting to determine its potential value.
3. Look at the number of bad photos from Dealers or Individuals that know how to take photos of coins. Sometimes it is not their fault .. just a lack of understanding. If you have one of those type coins the time to learn how to take good photos are now too late and those will have to be done next time.
4. Learning from photos what is an indicator of fraud or some dealer attempting to sell or unload their counterfeits.
Just to name a few .. if you think about it .. Internet whether you like it or not, is here may want to learn the tools

 

I looked into stacking and hoped to get photos without that much effort. Thinking for the detail I am looking for a copystand with correct aperture settings and various lighting will allow me to handle most everything we need at this point. Probably will look into a Microscope USB Camera with at least 3MP and 50x should I need to expand further. Too much hassle with my camera if we want more definition. At some point the time taken to photo these coins play an important factor for us.

 

Thanks Chris....

 

I disagree with this completely!

Photos provide the best record for insurance claims and evidence in the event of burglary or robbery.

Chris