Insane detail for the coin geeks and camera geeks out there...

Ok. The subject of this thread is the same 1943 Quarter as the "What would you grade this 1943 Washington Quarter" thread. However, this time it's not presented to you to assign a grade. Rather this time around, I am presenting this image in all of it's full 100% unsharpened, full resolution, unedited (with the exception of processing the RAW camera file, cropping and saving as JPEG) naked glory. I have never posted a full resolution image here before. I think this piece makes a fun example to study the flow of the silver as it was struck and forced to move into cavities under extreme pressure using well aged dies. This is for academic study and you are free to download and save the images if you wish.

Please don't comment on what you would grade it, there is another thread for that. I will be sending it off to PCGS economy service for grading when I have some other coins to accompany it that I won't mind not holding in my hands for 2 months. Instead this is for your viewing pleasure.

For you camera geeks out there @SuperDave, @rmpsrpms, @robec, @messydesk who are like me, want the technical info on this image. This was shot on a Nikon D800E DSLR using a Rodenstock APO-Rodagon D 1:4 75mm duplicating lens mounted on a Vivitar Macro Bellows System with Vivitar Focusing Rail attached to a Bogen copy stand. I used 3 Jansjo LED lights purchased from Ikea. Each light has the cap from a square half dollar tube with diffusing inserts I cut out from an old photoflex umbrella. The camera settings were set to Manual exposure mode tethered to my Mac and controlled using Nikon Camera Control Pro 2. The white balance was a custom white balance from a gray card. The lens aperture was set to f:8 with a shutter speed of 1/40th of a second at ISO 100. The image was captured with in camera Picture Control settings of "Neutral" in 14 bit RAW with no compression and processed using Photoshop CC 2014. I then made a circular selection and copied the quarter image to a new 5000 x 5000 px square document that had my logo already in place. I then used the Save for Web menu option and saved the image as JPEG High preset with the convert to sRGB option checked and embed color profile option checked.

All of my images start at this resolution and I follow the same routine with the exception of adjusting camera settings and lighting as well as editing the image to match the in-hand color and brightness. When I post images on here the resolution is reduced by 1/4th to 1250 x 1250 px in order to make a better web presentation. I usually select the bicubic sharper method when reducing my images and never apply any other sharpening to the image.

If you have any questions, at all, I will be more than happy to answer them for you. I enjoy helping others as much as some of the guys on here do. I am not going to hide how I do something to try and keep a trade secret as I have no trade secret. I enjoy photography both numismatic as well as nature and landscapes. I like to try to make money at it when I can, but mostly it's done for the fun of it.

I know the gear I used to shoot this is not cheap, and I would not have been able to afford it had it not been for these forums and the knowledge I have gleaned from them. Most of what I have is from the proceeds I was able to make from the sale of the 1919 DDO Mercury Dime that I had found last year. I thank @StrikeOutXXX for creating the thread that brought my attention to that new variety at the time. Most people would not have bought a camera system with the money, but, I was a photo geek before I became a coin geek. I figured what better way to reminisce about a coin I have sold then to have very high detail images of them. Most of what I buy is not to keep, but rather to flip to buy better coins that eventually stay in my collection.

So without further ado. Enjoy...

 

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Beautiful picture, I wish I could examine my coins with such clarity. I have a question, just for my learning; is that a crack near the "m" near the word unum?. The picture and the coin are impressive, I'm just curious. I wish I could produce pictures like that or have a coin like that. Any info would be appreciated, I still have alot to learn. Thanks. Eric

 

"We're not worthy! We're not worthy!"



{Beautiful pics, BTW!}

 

Great photos and even greater information. I didn't notice it on your original post photo but it's very apparent on this super-sized, the die crack running down the Eagle's right wing. I've noticed this on many raw Washington Quarters listed on ebay.

 

I bought my Nikon D80 in 2007 with proceeds from the sale of a couple 2007 Washington $1 in PCGS First Day holders with missing edge lettering. I've since upgraded the camera to a D610, but I think I got the better end of that deal.

 

Beautiful image, Justin. I'm surprised Nikon has such a thing as "uncompressed raw" - seems like an odd animal. Amazing detail you've got there.

 

DSLRs have had this format for a long time. It's not necessarily uncompressed, but it's lossless compression of the raw detector data along with camera meta-data, such as the exposure settings, lens detected (if possible), camera type, etc. These raw formats can change from camera model to camera model, so a conversion tool, such as Adobe Camera Raw, is required to convert them to something more universal, like a DNG file. Any editing of the picture is best done with the extended bit depth (in this case 14 bits per channel) data that you have with the raw or DNG data. The final JPEG image you see is a lossy-compressed, 8-bit-per-channel derivative of the raw data. If you load this file and try editing it, you will start to visibly lose information much more quickly.

 

Keep in mind, every one of us who uses dSLR's with dedicated lenses for coin photography starts out with an image like this before posting. Justin is using a Full Frame (35mm sensor) camera, giving him a vertical pixel capacity (defining the coin's largest-possible diameter on the sensor) of over 4900 pixels. That's nearly double the 2592 sensor vertical of my Rebel XS, but using similar lenses (and shooting RAW as well), there's very little sharpness difference between the two. Either way, one must drastically downsize the image before it's even usable online.

This is why I'm constantly harping on the dSLR/bellows/duplicating lens system for imagery. Not only do they do full-coin images of staggering quality, they eliminate both the need for a specialized microscope for detail images, and for a separate magnifying instrument for roll searching.

And if you don't have the stomach to drop $1500 on a full-frame camera like Justin (who has other photography interests, and can easily justify such a nice piece of kit), you can come down towards my end of the system and spend ~$100 on a used camera and ~$40 on a lens. And get essentially the same results.

 

Yes that is a die crack next to the M in UNUM. There are several small die cracks around the reverse.

 

I read the NEF format stuff, and Nikon provides:
- Uncompressed raw
- Lossless compressed raw
- Lossy compressed raw

My comment was that I'm surprised they provide an uncompressed raw. Or perhaps you know, you say that uncompressed raw is actually compressed - do you actually know that about the NEF format?

 

It bears mentioning that, using images as large as a dSLR can produce for coins, there's no darn reason at all to even mess with RAW for stuff you're posting online. Jpegs straight out of the camera, once downsized to posting size, will be of a quality which convinces everyone you're a paid professional.

 

My D610 is a 24 MP camera storing 14 bits per channel. Only one channel lives at each pixel, so to store that uncompressed would be 48 MB. The files I get range from 24 to 30 MB, so there needs to be some compression happening. The thumbnail image contained by the NEF file is stored uncompressed.

 

I'm still at 66... just kidding. Although, I do think whatever's going on on the reverse around 4:00 might have been hidden somewhere in the downsizing process when you posted your grading image.

Has everyone drooling over this pic seen this one? Warning: that link might make your internet connection cry.

 

Maybe, if you're really, really good with lighting. For me, I really like being able to adjust the exposure during post-processing, and that works a whole lot better if you've got the full-depth image rather than an 8-bit-per-channel JPEG. Canon cameras tend to capture significant additional detail in the highlights, but it's lost (clipped to white) in the JPEG the camera saves. I also like having the option to stretch contrast in the mid-range, and if you try that with JPEG, you start to see artifacts pretty quickly.

 

All true. I've gone the route of learning the intricacies of small-scale diffusion to eliminate the hotspots in the first place, rather than the greater intricacies of learning to eliminate them in postprocessing. There is no doubt you know a ton more about the latter than I do.

 

Exactly. There are three options to choose from with my camera model, Lossless Compressed, Compressed and Uncompressed. Each has the positives and negatives. Lossless compressed allows for a reduction in file size using an algorithm that creates a smaller compressed file without data loss. This is the option I choose when I am shooting on CF and SD cards in the field, it allows you to shoot more images per card. Compressed gives you the smallest RAW file size but at a cost, it uses a compression algorithm that like JPEG throws out data that is determined to not be essential to retain image quality. Lastly is the Uncompressed option which retains every bit of data created by the imaging sensor. This is the option I like to work with as there is ZERO compromise in image quality. The sensor dimensions on the Nikon D800E are 7360 x 4912 which translates to 36.15 MegaPixels or 36,152,320 pixels per image. An uncompressed RAW file has a data size that changes very little and is approximately 75MB. Lossless Compressed gives a file size that can vary depending on the complexity of the image generated by the sensor and typically gives a file that is around 46MB. Compressed also gives a file size that varies depending on complexity of the image and typically gives a file size of around 40MB.

The data from the sensor in RAW format can be set to either 12 bits or 14 bits in depth. For each increase in bit depth there is a doubling of the information being recorded. In terms for images the difference is the number of steps between a pixel that is on or off per color channel, so 1 Bit represents either black or white. A typical 8 bit JPEG file has 3 color channels at 8 bits per channel. Each color channel has a luminance range of 256 steps between black and white. Multiply 256 by 3 to arrive at the possible number of colors an 8 bit image can contain, which is 16,777,216 colors. With that kind of color pallet you can see why JPEG is good enough for a vast majority of images. When you start getting up into the 10 ,12 and 14 bit recording capabilities, your dealing with a greater ability to record not just color depth but dynamic range. Dynamic range defines the amount of information available from pure white or the brightest element of a scene down to black or the darkest part of a scene. If you are not planning on editing an image very much, then 8 bits can be enough to give a faithful representation. But, if you want to edit an image to say correct for exposure, then the highest bit depth you have will determine how much flexibility you have in pushing those pixels around without creating anomalies in your images. A 14 bit file gives you a range of 16,384 individual steps between black and white per color channel. This translates into 4,398,046,511,104 (or 4.398 Trillion) possible colors.

@messydesk mentioned a conversion program for all this data. This is required in order to interpret the data from the sensor. Each camera model produces it's own unique RAW format and differs even within the same manufacturer from model to model. Which is why it's necessary to update your image editing program when a new camera model is introduced. Adobe has created the DNG file or Digital Negative file which can convert the RAW data generated by a camera sensor and save it into a Universal format that can be read years down the road. It's sort of like back when betamax was around, some people had video cameras that recorded to a betamax tape. Well that format died out a long time ago. It will be very difficult to find equipment that will playback that betamax tape today. Now had you transferred that recording to VHS you would find it much easier to still play back that material. DNG was created because RAW conversion libraries within software suites need to continuously grow with each new camera model introduced. To save on resources, some of the outdated and less used RAW formats can be removed from those libraries in order to keep the software efficient. When those formats are removed, your RAW file is rendered unreadable similar to the betamax problem. Unless of course you keep an older version of software around to convert that older format.

 

You are correct. A large percentage of the bit depth is assigned to the highlights compared to the shadows. It's certainly not a linear distribution. The human eye is more sensitive to picking up differences in the highlights than in the shadow's which is why engineers designed the camera sensor the same way. More than 50% of the available bit depth is assigned to recording the first 33% of the information in the highlights. As you get down to the shadow information there are far fewer bits available to record that information. This explains why it's easier bring exposure down in post processing without a big degradation in image quality. On the hand when you try to bring up the exposure in an under exposed image, you start to introduce a lot of noise or color anomalies in the shadows.

 

So at a cost of about 30MB per image file, I'm still curious as to what value you're getting by using the uncompressed raw instead of the lossless compressed raw file. The only advantage I can think of is in sports photography where you might be shooting so fast that the compression routine slows down the shutter speed.

 

It's simply my OCD with quality. I'm probably not gaining anything, but I just set it to "Best" and go.

It's kinda like people that don't mind streaming HD video versus renting a Blu Ray. I will rent the Blu Ray over watching a streamed video all day everyday. I can see the difference, it may be subtle, but I know it's there. LOL