Wanna see my unbox my latest newp?

In response to Stork's request on the CU thread to see some pix of the setup in action, I'll bring out the old iPhone 3 again (note finger in photo again- oops):

Here is what it looked like when I shot the English penny above.

 

Here's one for my Litesider peeps.

I recently got this nice little '46-S Roosie in a bulk silver (not junk silver) lot.

Has nice cartwheel luster and some subtle pastel tones around the obverse peripheries. Not so much toning on the reverse.

This one was very tricky. I can tell coins like this are going to take me a LOT more practice.

Did much fiddling with light and focus before I came up with these images.

Considering my current level of experience (i.e., practically zilch), I'm about 80-85% satisfied with these pix... for now.

 

Next, let's try some copper.

This "Sam Jessop" love token has a very interesting backstory, as I discovered Sam Jessop was an infamous hypochondriac.

First, here are the set of images from the original eBay seller.




They do not do it justice.

Next, my attempts.

Again, I'm maybe 85-90% satisfied with how they turned out, based on my inexperience.

 

Here's one for my friend Dimitri in Greece.

This 1963 30-drachmai piece is a 34 mm silver coin.

Except for a little bit of russet toning around the crown, the coin is almost all white.

These images imparted a little bit more color than is actually there, I think.

This coin is considerably whiter in hand, and is quite lustrous.

I think my lighting and/or white balance were a tad off, here. I dunno.

Anyway, I'm perhaps 75-80% satisfied with these images.

 

"Nervous and hopeful" pretty much sums up my feelings, too.

Yes, that's the black disk background, but the images were cropped and resized down in MS Paint. (Not elliptical/circle cropped- Paint won't do that- just squared because I get a rectangular image in the raw shots off the camera.)

BTW, you might have noticed my stray comment earlier that 75 bucks for the old Bausch & Lomb microscope box seemed a bit "steep".

Disregard that. As the first thing I saw, when I noticed that it is likely as old as I am, I was a bit surprised initially. However, it is plenty sturdy and the ideal size to put everything into, while remaining nice and compact.

This was a critical need for me, since I do my photography in the office at work in the wee hours, on the manager's desk behind the front desk at the hotel where I am the night auditor. This means I have to put all my toys away at the end of the night. I can't leave everything set up. It also means I can carry the setup home on weekends.

So while the age of the microscope box surprised me at first, I've grown to like it. It's "an oldie but a goodie". And I like the old wood smell inside. (I still use one of my grandfathers' briefcases that is probably 1950s vintage. They don't make stuff like that the way they used to. My 2004-vintage briefcase is falling apart, while the Eisenhower-era one is still good!)

I did get an old flannel pillowcase to wrap the camera and stand in when they go into the box, to prevent them getting scuffed up by the bases of the two lamps when it's all packed up.

 

Could be. That's the lobby of the hotel where I'm the night auditor.

 

The steamboat one is older!

As it happens, this is an old thread, from early in my transition from Collectors Universe to CoinTalk a bit over a year ago. (I joined here in 2007 but posted only a dozen times or so before mid-2016). Gilbert must've clicked through from my "for sale" thread.

The camera setup is nice, but I hardly ever used it and it just never caught on with me. Partly because I am utterly bewildered by all the codes and numbers and symbols and hieroglyphs on that camera and in its software, and how to get the lighting right, and so on.

Given time, I could work through all that and struggle up the learning curve, but learning just seemed a chore to me rather than fun. I was never any good in school if I felt that way about a class. It seems I just don't have any passion for this, despite the encouraging beginning and the fact that I probably would indeed enjoy it if I hung in there a bit longer. The timing's just off for that, with major home renovations pending here and such.

I know some people love coin photography and enjoy it almost as much as the coins themselves, and hopefully this setup will end up with someone like that. In the meantine, I've found that when I need professional quality photographs, I'd rather pay professionals to do it rather than try to duplicate their work myself. For everyday images that only need to be adequate, I'm finding my new cellphone has a pretty good camera.

Another problem is schlepping the setup shown here to and from work. Ray built this setup for me with portability in mind- and portable it is- but still a hassle to drag around on my commute, when I could do 75% of what I need to with the phone in my pocket, instead, and pay professionals to do the other 25%. And my living quarters at home are presently too cramped and dusty and overrun with pets to set this up and leave it set up, so I haven't been using it here, either. I lack any kind of office space of my own.

So... it's a great setup, and had I owned it at a different stage in my life, with different living and working conditions to use it in, I would have no doubt enjoyed it very much.

 

LOL

I assure you, NO ONE would wanna see the pictures taken by an unsupervised robocam around this place...

 

If I don't have to play catchup on other things, monetarily speaking.

I might buy a small bauble.

 

Yeah, that was a bit much, wasn't it. Think I'll hide that one behind a hyperlink.

(That ain't me, but I'm headed alarmingly in that direction.)

(Of the previous photo, that is, not the blonde one.)