PHOTOGRAPHING COINS

ANY OPINIONS ON WHAT IS THE BEST EQUIPMENT TO PHOTOGRAPH COINS. IE: CAMERAS, MICROSCOPES, LOOPS OR MAGNIFIERS TO ATTACH TO COMPUTERS, TABLETS OF PHONES????
PEOPLE ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT PICTURES POSTED NOT BEING CLEAR.

THERE IS SO MUCH GREAT ADVICE BEING GIVEN ON THIS SITE AND IF MORE COINS COULD BE SEEN, I BELIEVE MORE ADVICE COULD BE GIVEN.

THANKS FOR ANY HELP

 

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I use a Canon. In my opinion microscope should only be used to see if a coin was cleaned or has some damage at x70.

 

You'll get a bunch of opinions on brands to use, but my recommendations is to get a DSLR camera, a macro lens, a copy stand, and appropriate lighting. If your camera can tether to a computer, it makes life easier - if it can stream live via tether, even better. A copy of Numismatic Photography by Mark Goodman would be a wise investment before you drop any serious money on equipment, though.

FYI - I use a Nikon D90 tethered to my laptop, a 100mm lens, a full sized copy stand and three diffused lamps. I'm still dialing in the settings on the camera, but I'm happy with the results.

 

Get the second edition of Numismatic Photography by Mark Goodman.
Might as well get the latest.

My setup is similar to jester's.
I use a Nikon D90 but only a Nikkor 60mm macro lens.
My copy stand is about as simple as you can get and I use only two lights.
Here's a picture:

 

Canon gives you free tethering software, and a vibration-free shutter when in Live View mode. You have to pay for the software for Nikon, and only the high end Nikons have vibration-free shutter. I would recommend getting an older-model Canon for these reasons.

The choice of lenses comes down to the size coin you want to shoot, and if you want to shoot any details of varieties and such. Here are a few options:

A) If you are only doing full-coin imaging of larger coins, then the macro lens approach is the easiest way to go. A Canon 100mm macro is an excellent choice. You're talking perhaps $600-$800 new or $300-$400 used for the lens. Such a lens will give you auto-focus as well so you can shoot faster.

B) If you want to do details shooting, up to perhaps 2:1 magnification, then you can add a 2x teleconverter to your macro lens and get pretty good detail shots. This adds another $100-$200. You get good speed as well if you buy a teleconverter that preserves the auto focus of your lens.

C) If you want to do variety imaging at higher magnifications (3x and up) then you have a few choices, depending on quality level desired:

1) A separate system for varieties like a USB microscope, or trinocular microscope. The USB microscope quality is not great, but they are very convenient and inexpensive. The trinocular microscope has a little better quality, and also gives you the convenience of an optical microscope for variety searching, but is much more expensive. Neither approach can take the place of a DSLR for high quality full-coin shots, so this is in addition to the DSLR system.

2) Adding a reversed wide angle lens in front of your macro lens will give you a good quality image. The magnification depends on the focal length of the lens. If you have a 100mm lens, and add a 24mm lens to the front, you will get about 4x magnification. This route adds another $100 or more depending on choice of front lens.

3) The bellows approach gives you the most flexibility in terms of magnification range, allowing full-coin imaging all the way up to high magnification variety imaging in one system. The tradeoff is speed, since bellows are inherently manual. There is no "fast" solution for shooting at high magnification, but going with this approach will force you to do manual focus for your full-coin imaging as well. The bellows will cost you ~$75-$125, while a lens suitable for full coin imaging will cost perhaps $75-$125. A lens for variety imaging will cost another $50-$75.

Any of these approaches will require a copy stand of some sort to hold it all steady. For full-coin imaging a standard copy stand works well. For varieties, fine focusing capability is needed, so either a copy stand with fine focus capability, a focus rail, or other approach such as a modified microscope stand is needed.

 

@TONYBRONX Made it for 2.99 you just go to Goodwill find old camera pull out the lens and you have a Macro phone. I just made one last night will use it with my I phone. Might buy a cheap cover to make it easier to put over the phone for now I just hold it over camera lens.

 

What the devil is it?

 

it is a photo lens from old camera glued on some plastic you put it in front of the lens of your I phone and you have a macro camera. These pictures are random and not proper lighting, but if you need that ,I also built a photo box for 6.00. the photo-box would take the light off these images and be crisper. LOL

 

And here is a cheap but effective photo box made for 6.00

 

Regular qtr no special lighting
attached

 

I printed this out thanks for the info @geekpryde. I think he said something he could use with the Iphone so that's why I jumped in with my home brew. I am not a photographer but a coin nut

 

As far as price goes @kkathyl0 has the best option I have seen, not to mention its a pretty darn cool bit of repurposing. There is a clip on lens that is available that does a great job of giving closeups as you zoom in with a camera or tablet. They run about $22ish dollars that I have seen and I got mine from Wizard coin supply. I'm pretty sure they are available from other retailers as well though. I'll upload some pics in just a second as soon as I find them on my phone...

 

And I am back... here are some of the pics.

 

@cwart look at you coming out with your Double D's

 

Eh, I took those before I learned what machine doubling looked like... lol

 

This thread should be interesting. I use an old Canon Rebel XS mounted to a Canon FD bellows mounted to an old repurposed microscope stand. I use various 50 and 75mm copy/enlarging lenses based on what I'm shooting.

 

Depends on budget and goals.

Sounds like I use something similar to Dave, and it's a set up I got from Ray. I had a few tweaks done because I like to shoot medals too, so the modifications get it from this (a 15.15 mm coin) and a bit smaller up to almost 70mm diameter.



with a detail shot (and it could do a bit better if I needed it)


This is my version of the camera/modified microscope stand straight from Ray's website:


And how it looks in my basement. I took off the stage for this 'working shot'. The camera isn't in view because it was moved higher for the medal.


Without the stage I can stretch up to a bit over a 70mm diameter like this one:


Anything bigger I use my cell phone with a bluetooth shutter release, using the same lights and location. This gets medals like this:


Budget-wise, well I had the phone and the laptop. The bluetooth release was under $10 from Amazon to use the phone. The camera/lens/bellows set up is what I bought from Ray. I use the Janso lights (?sp) from IKEA at about $10 each (plus shipping) with the lids of the 50 cent square coin tubes over them to diffuse the light a bit (not shown as that is a newer thing for me).

A DIY can be done but I had no patience or inclination for that so I bought the set up.

Cost was well under a super-duper set up, but well above a cell phone lens add on or a point and shoot. I can PM you what I paid if interested, but understand that Ray did a quite bit of extra work to make it go from smaller details and on up to medals for me.

 

OR....if you don't want to spend a bunch of cash on photography equipment right now, get a set of lenses that clip onto a smart phone. I used this macro lens to take this photo of machine doubling on a Lincoln cent.

 

Stork, very nice images.
Those bronzes are particularly impressive.