Featured Coin Photography: Lens Commentary using Nikon D7000

If you guys already haven't figured it out, these are MaineBills coins. These are coins I am taking pictures of only, and not submitting. I'll give MaineBill the pleasure of sharing all the other 45 coins when they come back from CAC.

I am still having real focusing issues. My camera is doing some weird stuff, I am being craxy anal about leveling and still I will get a photo where the left side is tack sharp, and the right side is fuzzy. I think my camera needs to hit the repair shop.

 

I'll play around a little bit, it's a balancing act between the luster and the detail and the color.

 

I just used this method, about to see if it pays dividends.

 

I have been playing around with templates. Coin buying is slowing, so I need to find ways to keep the hobby active without spending money.

I basically copied a format several collectors here use. The primary benefit of this template is that you get both a Closeup of the coin AND see the certificate label with year, grade, cert#, pretty stickers, etc.

The issue I have with my full slab shots (how I normally take them) is that too much real estate is taken up by plastic. The issue I have with simple cropped closeups is lack of details for my viewers, like varieties, grade, CAC stickers, etc.

So, this is basically the best of both worlds. I need to retake most of my collection with closeup photos, as I mostly have slab shots that lack coin detail of the closeup shots.

Here is some testing I did today with my version of this layout. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements (PSE) 9. 1200 x 960 pixels.

 

One reason I kept the label big is that I can clearly see the Cert number. It helps me keep track of my collection, name images, search for images, etc. I have a few thousand coin photos.

This uses some PCGS Coinfacts photos:



This is an example of low-rez photos, through scratched plastic. Ouch! These need to be replaced...



Former @Mainebill coin



Don't mind me, I'm just using this thread as my personal dumping ground.



A modern , I'm debating keeping this one in the Type Set.



I like this Modern Bullion coin better:

 

I never really understood hiding the cert#, but I've seen it before. In this day and age of Registry sets, hiding the cert# seems more or less useless. I mean, if someone is trying to keep their coins anonymous, don't post photos of them online.

In regards to Excel, I also use some sophisticated spreadsheets, and earlier in the year I had links directly to relevant images. I ended up removing that functionality, as it was too problematic for a few reasons. I am always taking new photos, renaming photos, moving photos, deleting photos, etc. It was particularly problematic for my setup, since I sync like 80,000 photos on 4 different machines, and they all have varying hard drives sizes and quantities. So on some machines, even thought the images are identical (synced copies), they were physically located at different paths on different machines, and this really broke the linking, depending on which machine I opened the Excel file on.

I don't own enough coins to justify putting barcodes on them, but if I was a dealer, I would definitely do this. Scan coins in and out, and a lot less handwriting, and a lot more useful tracking and bookkeeping than most dealers currently do. One day, as I have said before, the smart dealers will figure this out. "One ring database to rule them all".

 

Agreed. I have tried anti-shake (Vibration Reduction) both on and off. I don't really use it in my normal family photo settings, lets alone coins with tripod and a lot of light, but sometimes I play around to test my current setup, to see if changes should be made.

I agree, Sigma lens has been great, and I definitely got my money out of it. I didn't buy it for coins, and it mostly sat around for a few years, but once I got back into coins it was a fantastic to have around. Is the 105mm Nikkor $1000 better, probably not. Certainly not worth it for my typical "slab" shots, but as I am now working on closeups and templates, it would come in handy. I didn't have it long enough to figure out the lighting, but I would want to use it for more than just coins. I actually really like how macro lens work as normal prime lenses for portraits of the family.

But, to answer your question, the difference isn't so great that I dropped ~$900 on the lens yet. I can't really afford it right now, and would probably rather spend it on actual coins at this point even if I could. I really, really want to own that lens someday, maybe the wife will buy it for me.

You should definitely get on board with Lightroom, it is really great. I have not used Aperture at all, but read about it on photography forums and blogs. Being a Windows user, I doubt I will ever touch it.

 

The 105mm is definitely superior to the sigma 50mm I have, no question about it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the brand name. Nikon makes great lenses, Sigma makes great lenses. The resolution on modern DSLR has reached a point that it's beyond the entry level macro Sigma lens I have from that generation, circa 2002. The lens in this case is the limiting factor. The Nikon in question is a pro lens.

Not to mention, working at the 105mm focal length is more conducive to coin photography, which is the real reason I was looking for a fixed focal length macro lens.

I actually have never upgraded my camera lenses, I still own them all, and for the most part they don't overlap. I have a few primes, (fixed focal length), some wide angle zoom lenses, a medium telephoto zoom lens, a macro lens, etc.

Again, my 50MM Sigma does like 99% of coin photography and produces above average results. I am mostly happy. Do I want the 105mm Nikon, absolutely. Is it because it has the name "Nikon" on it, absolutely not.

 

The trick that @brg5658 posted in this thread is how I do it now, every time. Cheap, fast, easy. Mostly works to fix one part of the coin being out of focus.

I literally just borrow a 6 inch x 6 inch mirror my wife has, so in my case, it was literally a free solution and it works like a charm.