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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;SuperDave, post: 114779, member: 1892&quot;]Historically Canon digicams have owned the best macro features in the business. Even the less-expensive PowerShots are capable of taking perfectly decent coin pics - my teenager&#039;s elderly PowerShot A60 does a fine job, except I can&#039;t pry it away from him very often. :smile </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m currently using a Minolta Z2, purchased for the opposite end of its&#039; capability - long zoom and telephoto - and it still does OK:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://members.arstechnica.com/x/superdave/1878S_Obva.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://members.arstechnica.com/x/superdave/1878S_Reva.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://members.arstechnica.com/x/superdave/PICT0097a.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>These are all downsized to approximately 25% of original, and in sharp focus at full size. As important to successful photography as a good camera is, lighting is equally important. The weapon of choice for lighting seems to be the GE Reveal bulb. I use 2-120w Reveal R40 floods in homemade rigs involving circular-shield clamp lights wired with dimmers, and I play with location and angle depending on how I want the coin to appear.</p><p><br /></p><p>Your camera wants to have adjustable aperture up to the 8.0 range or so, adjustable exposure time, and preferably a custom white balance function so you don&#039;t have to correct for that afterwards. As you go smaller with aperture (higher number), you also need to lengthen the exposure to get enough light into the shot. The advantage of this is that you get better depth of field with smaller apertures, allowing you to tilt the coin a little to avoid reflection from the lighting. Most of my shots are at f8.0 and about 1/2 second exposure. I&#039;d get the same brightness at f3.2 and 1/60 second, for instance, but the coin would have to directly face the lens and in very tight shots you&#039;d still run the chance of the depth of field not catching both devices and fields on the coin - that screws me up when trying to get a sharp shot of a coin with die cracks.</p><p><br /></p><p>The bottom pic above was taken at f3.2, sharply focusing the leaf while blurring the background. f8.0 would probably have focused the whole field, but at the cost of lengthened exposure which might have cost me a sharp pic of the leaf since it was moving in the wind.</p><p><br /></p><p>I personally have my heart set on a Canon S2-IS. It&#039;s got an incredible macro capability, being able to sharply focus a subject which is <b><i>touching the lens,</i></b> while having a 12x zoom and image stabilization for me to use at NASCAR races. You can get one for $400-ish.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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