Featured Coin Photography: Lens Commentary using Nikon D7000

If I help even one person, it was worth it.

The bummer is, this is a $1000 lens, I paid $80 to rent it for 5 days with shipping to test out. I would say it is definitely better than any other lens I have tried for coin photography. Now I need to think about how to pay for it, and also I need to use my Sigma in the meantime, which will just never be the same to me again. This is a good news / bad news type of story.

Another shot for the road:

 

2 goose-neck lamps with Spiral Compact Fluorescent (19watt / 75 watt equivalent)

 

We'll I have been into cameras for about 15 years, and coins on and off for around 20 years, and one day in the last 3 years I decided to combine the two. Basically, it was seeing all the eye-candy on CoinTalk that made me step up my game.

I would say that I really struggled at first with the lighting, and changed out some very small LED goosenecks for the larger goosenecks lights that could accept a full sized spiral bulb. Basically a lot of trial and error. I really like full-slab shots, as this shows the basic coin info, the cert#, the CAC sticker, the type of slab (fatty, OGH, doily, etc). My Sigma 50mm prime was a cheap macro lens that produced "good-enough" results for a few years. Lately, I have been trying hard to get better as replicating results of Robec, Tom Bush, WingedLiberty, blu62vette, and others. I asked a few people, and many use a telephoto macro lens, which I had never really considered before. The best thing about https://www.lensrentals.com/ is that you can try high-end gear before you but it.

Ill post more about my trial and errors.

 

Depends on if you are DX or FX (Canon calls it something else, see here for more)

So, on my DX 105mm really = 157.5, so that is not wildly different than someone using a 200mm on a FX. But the 157.5 is really very close at ~10 inches from coin, so really in my opinion this lens focal length is plenty, and from all the lenses I've tested, is basically a perfect coin lens for the Nikon shooter. But I have not tested anything with a > 160mm macro, so I cant say for sure.

The lens does focus very slightly coin-to-coin, and even very small changes can make a big difference, for instance scratches on slabs can be a very big nuisance. If you go to f11+, you really start seeing all these scratches show up in the photos. To some extend, 5.6-f8 lets you focus past those scratches. So you keep a shallow-er DOF than you might think, and be more anal about the focus.

Even micro adjustments such as the previously mentioned AF-fine-tune can make a big difference, camera to camera, and lens to lens.

 

So true! I was thinking it was some other aspect of my setup, but I am almost ready to declare that my current gear + 1 new lens can make all the difference in the world.

Here are some other detailed reviews for further reading:

http://www.bythom.com/105AFSlens.htm

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/105vr.htm

Still tons to learn, but I wanted to share before I figured coin photography out, as this would be another 10 years!

 

This has a lot to do with lenses being at their sharpest in the middle apertures, say 5.6-11. Different lenses are sharp at different points, but many get "soft" at f16+, not to mention at f11+ you are really losing a lot of light, and the shutter speed has to slow way down to compensate, or you need to crank ISO, which also makes the photos grainy and soft.

 

I thought that too, but at this extreme macro shots, there is just enough vibration from the camera itself, and the floor the tripod is on, that faster shutter speeds are better in my testing. I really don't like to use anything less than 1/125, and more like 1/160 is better. I mean, the camera is on the tripod rock solid, but when I am looking through the viewfinder at a coin 10 inches away, at a focal length equivalent of 157mm, I can see the coin bounce around a tiny bit from the slightest step (my dog / kids / wife), or if I breathe on it. The test shots I've done with the sigma 50mm were better with faster than 1/125 than say 1/60. But I'll admit I did not actually test slow shutter speeds with the 105mm, but I assume unless I really have the tripod weighted with sand bags, I think the vibrations are enough with any lens to mess with perfect focus. (I do see people weigh down tripods with sandbags, or other weights, but I have not tried this yet).

 

If I had the money, I would be buying this lens from http://www.bhphotovideo.com/ today. In fact, I may sell my 55-200 and some other things to try and scrounge up the money in the coming months.

1/320 sec, f5.6, ISO 200, 105mm:

 

Thanks for all the replies. I do use the remote trigger from Lightroom to take all shots. I have used the "exposure delay mode" on Nikon, but I don't see that much of a benefit.

I read on the DP forums this feature described as:

This is separate from mirror lock up, so ill check that out, I found this to read: Shooting Techniques / Static Subjects