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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;rsand, post: 1665779, member: 40749&quot;]Ditto that, that&#039;s a heck of a phone. Also good job cropping out the background!</p><p><br /></p><p>FWIW here&#039;s my formula, which uses a DSLR but otherwise is a very minimal setup, and will work with higher end P&amp;S cameras as well so long as they have manual controls. </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve an old Minolta 100m f/2.8 macro and it spent the last 10 years in an untouched camera bag. For me it was the camera body that was expensive (not that the lens was cheap, but having bought it back in the 90&#039;s and used it heavily back then I&#039;ve absorbed that pain already...).&nbsp; So I finally sprang for a Sony a57 body to accept my Minolta lenses last summer, mainly to photograph coins (caveat, most consumer DSLR&#039;s have smaller sensors than old 35mm film cameras, so the effective focal length of my lens isn&#039;t 100mm anymore). Honestly the macro functionality isn&#039;t really even adding much. When I photograph dollars or the occasional note I switch out the macro lens for the 17-55 lens that came with the body.</p><p><br /></p><p>I use a tripod I bought for $45 at Best Buy and love it. I use two desk lamps with 60-watt equivalent daylight-balanced CFL bulbs. Every bulb is different - I find that with these, the red/blue balance is pretty good doesn&#039;t need tweaking, but all fluorescent bulbs give a green cast so I have adjusted my white balance for that. I generally position the lights at about right angles to each other with one at a higher angle to the coin (approx 75 degrees or so) and the other at a lower angle (30-45 degrees).&nbsp; I manually set the ISO on the camera to 100 (that is a comparably &quot;slow&quot; speed) and set the aperture to f/9.5. Of course, the camera flash is off, and I use a remote trigger - basically a button attached to a wire that plugs into the camera, so that I don&#039;t shake the camera when snapping the photo. You can get the same benefit by using your camera&#039;s timer so you aren&#039;t touching the camera when you snap the picture. I place the coins on a plain white sheet of paper, although I&#039;ve experimented with using some of the lens-cleaning cloths I have accumulated as colored backgrounds.</p><p><br /></p><p>To get even better images, I&#039;d upgrade to a lightbox. There are many DIY tutorials on how to build your own lightbox, and also fairly inexpensive rigs can be found (check out B&amp;H Photo/Video - I&#039;ve been buying from them for 20 years and they are still the best IMHO). The basic idea is to totally diffuse the light into even, white, and generally shadowless light without washing out the details of the coin. For me I&#039;m more constrained by space and the fact that I&#039;ve gotten satisfactory results. I&#039;d like them to be better, sure, but is it worth the time and money? 80/20 rule...</p><p><br /></p><p>I hope this helps. As said I&#039;m no expert on this subject so YMMV but this formula has worked pretty well for me.</p><p><br /></p><p>One last piece of advice - get an &quot;eye-fi&quot; memory card. You stick that baby in your camera and as you take pictures, they automatically are sent over your local wifi directly to your computer. I never have to deal with taking out the card or plugging my camera into my computer to get the images. It sounds like a silly point, but once I started using it I could never go back! Its great to be able to snap a picture, have it instantly on your computer so you can view it in your photo viewer of choice, rotate and crop it etc, and if you aren&#039;t happy, just take it again. Really streamlines the process.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some of my pics:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH]247067.vB[/ATTACH][ATTACH]247068.vB[/ATTACH][ATTACH]247069.vB[/ATTACH][ATTACH]247070.vB[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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