Hi This is my first posting I am looking for a digital camera that can take excellent pictures of coins. I have cool pix 950. My pictures seem out of focus to me and the color of the coins is not exactly correct. Any help would be appricated Joe procoins
This one is long, sorry everyone.... First of all, taking excellent pictures of coins is really difficult stuff. You can sink a lot of money into gear and it won't necessarily help if you do not know some camera basics. Some cameras have a minimum distance in which they can focus on the coin. Pull back a little bit and see if you can get the camera to autofocus. Now for the big question - What exactly do you want to do with the pictures? If you want them for good looking snapshots of your coins and for insurance, then just about any camera will do the trick. Photography is 80% about light, and your average household room is woefully inadequate regarding the light situation. Use a couple of desk lamps and try not to point them directly at the coin. If you are like me, though, and want super high res images for error, variety and other odd desires, you will have to drop some serious coinage (pun intended ). I had a Nikon 5400, a terrific camera, but the photos were muddy and not sharp at all. This is an image taken with the 5400... Nikon 5400 Pic of 1884 CC Morgan Reverse I was irritated, and got something a whole lot better (and seriously expensive, I hate to say): The Nikon D70 SLR digital. It is worth every penny for those super incredible shots that you can dive in and see the metal flow. Nikon D70 Pic of 1884 CC Morgan Reverse !!!Don't click the above link on a dial up connection - very large image!!! I'm glad I spent the money. It is all in what you want from your coin pictures that will dictate how much you choose to spend. Just make sure and take coins to your camera shop when you go to look. Ask them to take pictures of your coin, and show you the results. Good luck! Cris
In addition to the minimum focal distance, using a tripod or stand of some kind can help with focusing problems. Some people have steady enough hands to take freehand shots closeup. Other people don't. For the color issue, see if your camera has a white balance setting. Mine (Nikon 4300) has several and also a manual that lets you shoot at a white sheet of paper under your lighting conditions and adjusts from there. That is what I typically do for coin shots.
D70 Camera Do you use a macro lens or did the lens the camea came with produce the nice clear picuture shown.
The 60MM Nikon Autofocus lens that attaches to the D70 body is a macro lens. It is also a good general purpose lens, but you won't get any zoom to speak of from the lens... If you are lucky enough to find a D70 outfit that has a lens with the package in addition to the 60MM you'll need to take the uber good coin photos, that lens will be good for pretty much anything else. The D70 is a body only camera when you buy it by itself.... Hope this helps... Cris
Lens The lens being offerd to me on the D70 is a 18 - 70 mm DX lens is this the same as the 60 MM Nikon Autofocus lens your talking about ? Thanks a lot for the info your saving me a lot of time and money since you hava alredy solved this problem. I like the picuturs and located a camera body and lens I mentined above and they are within my budget for this project.
No, it is a different lens. It is the Nikon - 60MM F2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor Lens. It is what I think is called a prime lens, since there is no zoom to the lens. But that really doesn't make a bit of difference when you are snapping pics of the coins on a tripod, eh? I am glad to help - I wasted the money, so if I can help someone else from my mistakes, I am glad to do so.
I have a Nikon Coolpics 3100 and have had ok success with taking photos of coins to be used as jpgs to display on a computer screen (not for printing photos). So, if that is want you want to do, hopefully your camera is able to do it as well. However, out of the box, the photos were horrible and I have had to play around with it a lot to get it to where I am ok with the results. You have to play with the settings and make it right for your environment/lighting conditions. I will assume that your coolpix is similar to mine, so here are the settings I use: 1. No Flash. I turn off the flash and have two halogen desk lamps provide lighting. 2. No Flash = Tripod or some sort of holder. Actually, I have a custom made holder that works well. No matter how steady you think you can hold the camera, it will be blurry if you hold it by hand. 3. Set the "close up" setting to on. This coolpix has a pretty good close up ability, but you have to turn this setting on. Otherwise the camera won't focus properly. With this setting, you can get the lenses very close to the coin. 4. An finally, you have to play with the white balance setting on the camera. I found that the color of the coins was much better if I turn the setting to "flourescent" rather than incandescent. 5. Sometimes I play around with the exposure setting to get a better photo. Anyway, I hope that helps. Best Regards, - Hal
I just bought a Kodak 6490 Digital 4MegaPixel it has a 10X Optical Zoom here is a couple picks it took: and This was took in my kitchen with florecent lighting. I did not use any extra lighting and those are w/o flash except the small Reverse Silver Eagle thats with the flash. Dont know if those images are decent egnough but I am sure the camera can take better images in the right conditions. This was only $400 for the camera. I need to set up my tripod and use the tilt to tilt camera toward ground to stabilize camera instead og trying to hold the camera steady. I am sure that may help my images to be better.
Nikon D70 closeup "example #2 Hi, I too am looking for a "Coin Camara" for good close up's, so I ran across this forum, I have a question, I looked at the (2) samples of the (2) different camara's and the first one "is bad", the second one is "really nice", but the closer you get to the bottom, it look's more and more like the first example, why is that? Thanks, MintSetSmith
