im intending to make a permanent set up for macro photography, to be used obviously for coins.Been looking around because of another thread in here about taking coin pics. Well im not a camera person at all and i dont want to spend much money on setting it up.It will be a permanent setup with tripod and lights that i wont dismantle.question is there are so many camera choices ect and setup choices. does anyone do this and achieve very good photos, and whats your reccomendation of equipment i should buy.I dont want to break the bank but i also want something i wont be disapointed with 6 months later and have to upgrade. So does anyone have reccomendations to what i should get to build this set up.I saw some great pics on ebay that some sellers use to display there coins and i want to achieve the same.ive just built an great professional looking template and purchased domain names which i also will host with database and shopping cart so will also use this to display coins.I see what people now mean by scanners just dont cut it.
2 GE Reveal Light Bulbs indirectly angled (at 45 degrees) about 2 feet from the coin on a black, porous background (black linen cloth) are a good start. Remember, black is absent of color and no light is reflected from this "color". I picked up a number of tips reading these threads and probably the best inexpensive tip was the use of a milk/water gallon jug with the top cut off to diffuse the light even more. Good luck... Here's a small sample:
hehe yeah thats the kinda pics in looking for. what camera do you use? and what are these lights? and whats the bottle thing ?
i got me a package delivered today with some very nice coins a steal off of ebay heck the silver content i got is worth more than the price i paid but these coins are not all scrap far from it but i got 1800s corwns and groats and shillings and a uncirculated 1899 3 pence as well as other nice bits and pieces
I use a older Olympus 3.2 megapixel digital camera in the macro mode. Any decent digital camera should do the trick. NO flash! GE Reveal lights can be purchased at any store that sells light bulbs. Regular light bulbs have yellow hue to them. These cover more of the visible light spectrum. The bottle thing is taking a water/milk gallon plastic jug, cutting off the top so that you can place the coin at the bottom of the jug on a black blackground. The light bulbs are 2 feet away (45 degree angle) so that the light hits the plastic jug, diffuses the light even more, giving you better lighting conditions (less shadows). Also, if you can take the pictures next to a window (daylight) with additional natural lighting, all of the better.
nice guys thanks i guess then you set the camera up on a tripod looking down the hollow carton. im not sure if we have the same milk type cartons here milk cartons we have they have a sorted frosted effect to them so you cant see through them. light would get through but thats it, is this the same thing your talking about. also what type of tripod will set the camera looking directly vertically down over the milk carton, ive seen many for sale browsing to build a set up, but im not sure about this aspect either. like i said complete camera novice
Plastic, frosted milk/water gallon jugs are the same here and there. They are translucent to light, hence the diffusing aspect of this. You want light to get through the jug, but after it gets through, you want it diffused! I use a basic tri-pod pointed down (almost at a 90 degree angle) to the coin. Here's where I got the idea from. The only thing I added was the black porous background and the use of 2 GE Reveal 100 watt lights (angled). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/020809.htm
