Featured [Coin Photography] A Blacker Black

Some great info in here. Want to try some photography, so keen to learn. Have a Fuji X100F camera. Not sure how it will go for coins, but is an excellent camera. It's a fixed focal length and doesn't have a zoom, but does have macro.

What I'm interested in is what copy stand people use for those who don't have the time or know how to make their own. I live in Australia, and the cheapest decent looking one I can find is the Kaiser reprokid copy stand, but it's $300 AUD. Seems a bit excessive.

Can anyone recommend anything else? Could try the plastic container approach, certainly won't cost $300!

Thanks if anyone has any ideas.

 

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Well Di Nomos, I was in the same quandary as you with regard to copy stands - I didn't like the price or quality of what was available at a price point of $200 to $300 so I made my own. Photo below. Now, I have a machine shop, so I could make pretty much everything from scratch. My total cost for raw materials, including the gear rack was about $200. My target was to make it very rigid and stable so everything is heavy duty. The column was a fork tube from a 1976 Kawasaki 900, a relic from my old drag-racing days. With some ingenuity, you could probably make yours out of a piece of steel pipe, use a thick 1" to 1-1/2" wood base (the pre-made round table tops you can find at the big-box hardware stores is what I used) and you'll need to get creative for the clamp and camera mount.

To the original OP message, I painted the base with the super-black 3.0 paint (about 8 coats of water-thinned material). It is very non-reflective. You can tell the difference by comparing it to the spray-bomb flat back paint used on the column and the column base. but I've found that it tends to scuff easily, leaving the scuff marks looking kind of grayish. You can see the marks left by my light clamps at the front of the base even though the clamps use a HDPE plastic cushion. If I was doing it again, I'd forgo the expensive paint and paint it with regular flat black and use black velvet to cover the base.

My camera is a Nikon DSLR 610 with a Sigma 105mm macro lens, remote shutter release. The combination is pretty heavy but so is my copy stand. So far, I haven't had to use the "mirror up" function to reduce vibration but it is early days.

Light fixtures are $7.99 each from the dollar store, highly modified and lighting is 1680 lumen, 5000K LEDs

Best of luck and tell us how your sojourn goes.

 

I continue to believe that wood is better at dampening vibrations than metal and that gear racks are not necessary for coin photos. My current rig was built from scraps I had but could be duplicated for about $5 including screws. As stated earlier in this thread, I have no need for super black paint because keeping light from falling on regular level black material works. The left side of my image shows my metal rod set upright in a wood base. Smaller height adjustments are made by changing top top piece made of recycled ball point pen tubes of different lengths. These allow me to focus with my rig in steps ranging from about 10mm to 40mm. Larger coins are shot by removing the yellow box at the bottom and removing one of the extension tubes on the lens.

The right side photo shows the addition of my darkness shade made from two stacked plastic flower pots (from plants placed in the yard) with holes cut in the bottom. My height here is overkill but allows better control of the light than a single pot would provide. This photo does not show lighting (that is another post but I am using a lot of natural window light here lately).

I like Publius2's workmanship and professional look but mine is rock stable and cheap. I built it for a Canon 5DmkII which weighs twice my current Canon FP mirrorless body. I suppose I could make another smaller and cheaper but see no reason to downgrade.

Opinion: All posts showing camera rigs should also include a sample mage made from the rig. I have not added any coins yet this year so this is an old Septimius Severus coin reshot this week.

This is an unreduced crop if you click to enlarge. Its faults are from the lighting and decisions I made, not the rig.

 

Nice work, Doug and just shows how many ways there are to skin the cat. You are correct about the gear rack. It is superfluous but the engineer and machinist in me just wants to make it more than it needs to be, once I became liberated from the corporatist mindset via retirement- LOL.

To your point about supplying images taken from the stand, I am in the infancy stages of coin photography and editing software, but here's something I was working on today. I haven't quite figured out how to put the label in properly.

 

Photographing slabbed coins is something I will never learn to do. Photographing modern coins is very little more familiar to me. The walking half is shown well to my amateur eyes.

 

Thanks for the info guys. Those home made setups look way sturdier than anything I can buy here. Might just have to give it a try and cobble one together. If I can't get it right can always buy one after.

As for the photos being taken, they look great to me, I'd be happy with anything as good as those! Well done.

 

I'm still working on my photo setup (axial lighting; I will post some details later). I was just wondering, as this thread has turned into a more general thread about coin photography: who's using tethered photography, i.e. connecting the camera to the computer which 'takes over' the camera?

Digicam control is such a (free) program. It allows to view the photo on a large screen even before the photo is taken (live view). The only material needed is a USB cable that connects the camera to the computer.

 

Canon cameras come packaged with free 'EOS Utility' software for this purpose. They also say the camera can be operated remotely with a smartphone app (also free) but I have not looked into that yet. I find the articulated touchscreen easier to use for coins since it leaves hands free to adjust coins. I have not had camera jar problems yet but do suggest the 2 second delay option. I bought my first Canon in 2006 and was impressed with what came with it. Since that time I have not kept up with what other companies were doing since I use the same lenses for all bodies. I am sure other brands work as well but not all give away the software.

 

I use a super cheap setup, but works out pretty well

Nikon D60, black mousepad and indirect sunlight, then some editing in Microsoft Paint.

 

Excellent support. Not all cameras would sit on that and be parallel to the coin below. Did you have to select books with this in mind? The sample photo is excellent.

 

Thank's Doug. I did have to be pretty selective with the size of the books, the stacks are slightly different in height and one of them also slightly angled upwards at the top to make the camera lens lay as horizontally as possible.

I still have to make about 20-40 shots of each side as there are slight vibrations at times making the images blurry in some areas.

 

If the camera has a self timer, use it to allow the vibrations to settle down before the shutter opens.

 

I'm going to try that with books.

 

Since you have a Nikon D60, it probably has the "mirror lock" function. Using this, pressing the shutter once raises the mirror out of the way, pressing shutter release the second time takes the picture. Combine this with a remote release and/or the shutter timed delay release will eliminate many sources of vibration. I think I've got this correct, I am very new to the world of DLSRs.

 

@Michael Stolt, it appears you read Swedish and Norwegian? I do, too. Or, you found some cheap books at a garage sale . Please PM me if you're into Norwegian or Swedish coins/currency. I'm on my way to both countries this week.

Steve

 

For coins, I am a fan of the new technology mirrorless cameras as made by all the major manufacturers. They combine the large sensor size (different from the pixel count!) of the DSLR with the low vibration release of the point and shoot cameras. This is not as great when shooting subjects like sports where any shutter delay is too much but it is great for coins.

 

I'm from Sweden, so that explains the books in that language I only specialize in Roman Republican and Imperatorial coinage. So I don't collect anything outside of that. But I do like looking at Swedish 16-18th century coinage from tiem to time as it is a very interesting time period in Swedens history.

 

@Michael Stolt, I’m in “broderfolkets dal” now. Heading to Täcksfors today. What a change from Minnesota’s winter! Looks like late September here!

steve