Post your coin photography set-up

Are you talking about that microscope stand? That was a camera bellows mounted on a two legged microscope stand. Its a custom job. I researched it and found it would cost ballpark $300 to make it happen.

 

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Wow! $300! This is the photo on page one that I mentioned. I bought what appears to be exactly this camera stand. This photo is showing the smart phone adaptor attached to a smart phone. I am disappointed in this, but mostly because my 4 Megapixel camera — not a smartphone — will not take a well focused closeup with it. With my camera it is nearly impossible to take a real clear shot because the stand is not sturdy enough to remain rigid while the "shoot button" is being pushed. The only thing I might try would be to do delayed shutter action, hoping that there is enough time for the camera post to re-stabilize. I paid $12.99 for it at Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005CRKX3K/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

That is standard procedure for shooting coins, with any camera. What's the minimum focusing distance for your camera?

 

Way down there...

https://www.cnet.com/products/kodak-easyshare-z700/specs/

 

OK, with a minimum of 4" you *ought* to be able to make the camera give you decent shots; lighting at that distance will be more of a problem than focus so you'll want to experiment with varying distances to see how far you can get from the coin while still getting shots large enough to be satisfying. Lighting is a lot easier with increasing distance from the subject.

A shutter timer should solve your vibration problems.

 

You probably know the answer to this, then, Dave: The manual says for normal shooting to move your camera to the distance from the subject you want, push the shutter button halfway until you see a green light, then push the shutter all the way in. Do you think this will work with the built in shutter timer too?

 

I think that's how it works, but I would just try it out.

The first hands-on experiment I would perform is just holding the shutter halfway down and moving the camera closer and closer. When the green light does not come then you know you are past the closest focus distance. Then back it away until the green light comes on. This is the distance you will use for every shot, since it will give the biggest coin image on the camera sensor and capture the most information about the coin.

The second hand-on experiment would be to set the timer to maximum, which is usually 10 seconds. (You know, time enough to run around from behind the camera and position yourself in a group photo!) Now you can try gently pressing the shutter and give the camera time to stop jiggling.

So I happen to think this will work but it's pretty straightforward to give it a try and find out.

One last note. Film cameras often have a threaded hole in the shutter button where a remote release cable can be attached. It eliminates vibration by having you press the button at the end of a long cable so you don't physically touch the camera.

If this is an iPhone, then the earbuds that come with it can be used as a remote trigger for the shutter. Just plug in the earbuds and press the button on the cord. 5 Weird Ways To Release The iPhone's Shutter

There may be articles on how to trigger your specific phone's shutter, too.

 

Yes, that'll work. The halfway push causes the camera to autofocus, and finishing the push trips the shutter. If you have the delay set, it will time the delay after you finish the push.

 

Oops, ignore the part about the phone. I knew full well that you had a Kodak camera you were using, but I got misled by the stock photo of the copy stand with the phone connected to it. If your camera does not have any other way to remotely trigger the shutter (mine has an actual remote control with a shutter button) then the timer is a time-tested approach as well.

I searched the review sites and found this information " Focus ranges from 24 inches (60 centimeters) to infinity in normal mode, with a Macro mode ranging from 2.0 to 27.6 inches (5 to 70 centimeters). (The minimum Macro focus distance depends on the zoom setting.)" http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/Z700/Z700A.HTM

In practice you will want to zoom in so the focus distance is far enough from the coin so the camera does not block the light. Mine is about 6 inches above the coin so I have plenty of room to reach in and reposition the coin without touching the camera. That also allows enough room to position the lights so they can fully light up the entire coin's surface.

 

Keep in mind, minimum focus distance is with the camera zoomed all the way out. That distance will increase as the zoom is increased, and although it's worth the experiment, you're not likely to gain anything by it. At full zoom, you may need to be ten feet from the coin....

 

I stumbled on anecdotal evidence to emphasize the importance of lighting. As suggested in this thread, I use the small Jansjo $10 LED lights from IKEA. I had to upgrade a failing monitor, but it's the only one that has an input matching my camera, so I just moved it across the desk as a dedicated camera display.

In the process, I took off the pieces of tissue paper I had over the lights. I thought they weren't really useful. This is the result.


The naked lights generated a ton of glare and made a very harsh image. I found some more tissue paper and wrapped it around the lights again (two layers thick) and reshot under the same conditions. (There is still a touch of harshness, and I may yet try three thicknesses of tissue paper.)

Fortunately the LED lights do not generate any heat that I can detect. If these were incandescent bulbs I would not be comfortable putting thin pieces of paper close to the bulbs.

 

Never mind the lighting, let me have your coin!

 

I now have a new setup, courtesy of Ray (@rmpsrpms ) over at www.macrocoins.com. This is a variation of his system #1, with a special modification.

I contacted him about rotating a coin under the camera while tilting it at an angle. This has been my standard approach to making animations. To make it work, I wrote some software to realign the images. While it works pretty well, there is some residual swaying when the algorithms cannot align the rotated images with sufficient accuracy.

Discussions with Ray led to his devising a new invention, shown here.


The coin is placed on the platform and does not move during the shooting.

The lens has been modified by adding a rotating collar. On the collar is a bank of 9 small LEDs. I rotate these to a number of different positions to get lighting from different angles. (In the first photo you can see that I use one Jansjo for overall fill lighting, so the rotating light source is a second light source.)​

My new images are three times the size of my previous camera, but I still downsize them to 800x800 for publishing. (The originals are kept unharmed in case I need them some day in the future.)​

I modified my software so I fine-tune the rotation of one image (say, by a degree or so) and draw a cropping boundary around the coin. Then I apply the same rotation and cropping to all the images. This is easy since the coin and the camera never move. With these cropped images, I am ready to join them in obverse / reverse pairs, and combine those paired images into an animated GIF file.

Here is my first result with this new equipment and workflow. There are seven photos of each side, shown in the order 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, and using an elapsed time of 1.1 second to move from image 1 to 7.


Thank you, Ray!​

 

Amazing!

 

Colossal!

 

So nice!
So Cool!

 

I faced a new problem with animation and came up with a new solution. Some coins are so bright that a single light source causes a lot of glare and reflected hot spots. I tried various ways to flood the surface of the coin with light to reduce the overall contrast between the highlights and darker areas. This sort-of worked, but the rotating LED shown in post #173 is a different color temperature from my usual Jansjo lights. The Jansjo are a soft white, and the rotating LED attachment is quite blue. This wreaks havoc with white balance. With light sources of mixed color temperatures, rotating the bluer light gives a blue cast to all the highlighting, too.

I needed to be able to illuminate and rotate with the same lights. My wife had a turntable that she used in her art studio, and let me use it. It is just big enough to put the entire microscope stand and camera on it, as shown here.



Now the lights are stationary, but the entire coin and camera assemblage rotates under the lighting as a single unit. The coin never moves with respect to the camera, but both move with respect to the lights.

Enough talk, here's a picture. Feel free to expand it.



In spite of appearances, the coin never moves relative to the camera, and there is no difference in position from one frame of the animation to the next. The angle to the lights does change from shot to shot, so the shadows move. The light may strike different parts of the contour of the design, so the highlighted reflective points do move across the coin. It is enough to convince my brain that the coin is moving, even though I already know it isn't.

 

Very nice Ron!

So now you've tried 3 different solutions:
1) Move the coin while keeping the lights and camera stationary
2) Move the light while keeping the coin and camera stationary
3) Move the camera and coin while keeping the lights stationary

The small size of the photo setup makes #3 practical, and gives an excellent result. Advantage is you can optimize the lighting in fixed position, then do the rotation. The 9-LED light doesn't give much room to play around, so lighting would always be sub-optimum. I think you have come up with the best solution and it's working well.

 

Why didn't any tell me about this section? I would love to share my setup.


In this image are the products I use to photograph and inspect coins and other items which require good lighting and mounted capture devices for extreme stability from most important to, subjectively, least important.
1St you will need a monitor. A windows 10 laptop is my choice for monitor and capture software.
The 2nd most useful to me is the usb macro-scope, also known as an endo-scope, but mounted to an adjustable stand to operate as a conventional microscope.

The design of the endoscope is important for 2 reasons,..
1. The built in light at the lens is required for illumination when the scope body is in close proximity to the subject, for close examination, and blocks external sources of light.
2. The fine adjustments and stability required to capture images at higher magnification levels. Note-
the ability of these devices designed for macro viewing require very close proximity to the subject and offer very little ability to crop and or zoom (digitally) due to limitations in the sensor size and pixel density. So basically what you see is what you get. This scope in particular can reach magnification levels that surpass most useful coin analysis, to being able to view fully view a Morgan at it's maximum adjustable limit as illustrated...
The next useful function of the scope depends on the software, which is 3rd in my list of importance. Notice in the next set of illustrations how using proper software can contribute to the function of the scope by using image adjustments such as gamma, gain and contrast to achieve an impressive amount of detail for a very achievable image. This combined with proper lighting such as the 10 inch ring light to fill in shadows around the devices accompanied with a warm incandescent will enhance certain characteristics of a coin, and requires different approaches to accomplish satisfactory results which will be #4 in my most important tools for photos,
I would now like to focus on the next image.. pun required for this demonstration which will bring us to the topic of focal length. Focal length is the cameras ability to focus on a subject with depth. This is a problem in macro photography where it is possible to focus on the eye of a fly but leave the viewer unsatisfied with the surrounding body being out of focus. This is where another software comes in... (these particular imaging utilities are free, by the way). We call it image stacking. This is clever stuff... As the example below illustrates a series of the following 3 images (stability required here) at different focal points are taken and then processed by stacking software to make a composite image of the "in focus" pixels in the images thus creating a surreal image which is completely in focus as seen in the 4th and final image for the viewer to admire...

I would like to mention the glasses and other lenses seen in the opening "set up" image. These may be the most organic way to examine a coin in hand within our 3 dimensional world. It is the combination of in hand appeal, magnification and knowledge that will complete a proper coin examination.