Today a video was posted to You Tube showing excellent still photos magnified considerably and 'zoomed in' on small sections while panning around the image. I found that very effective compared to the usual wiggling of a whole coin in hand or floating in space as some dealers have started offering as part of their auction listings. I have do many tightly cropped images of sections of coins for one reason or another but I have not transferred these to video as done here. It is something I may want to try. Of course starting with great coins and state of the art photo equipment helps a lot. No web resource like Coin coin talk can allow whole coin images in size great enough to achieve this full effect but we can shoot close parts and remind viewers to click on the image to enlarge and move the section showing around themselves. It is a good idea and new to me. A few of my old photos showing parts of coins are below. Add yours and add a note on why this part of the coin deserved "zooming in". Two sections of a fourree Alexander III tetradrachm: A countermark and section of the stater that bears it: The head of a goat from an RR denarius: Faces from satyr and nymph of Thasos: TI from a Tribute Penny showing the characteristic way the T was made with a notch in the top: A falling horseman struggling to regain his feet: Detail of a shield of Probus: Year date 34 over 33 on a tetradrachm of Ptolemy II: These were all taken with my older (lower resolution) camera. Now that I am not adding coins to my collection, perhaps I will have more time to 'play' with the others.
Beautiful closeups, Doug. I find that when I try enlarge an area on a coin, using a +4 macro lens, the results are not exactly stellar: In addition to the rough surfaces of this bronze coin, the definition really declines this close in. But, with my limited equipment, this is probably the best I can do. This is a photo of the same coin with less magnification: And this is the full coin, obverse and reverse:
Great images @dougsmit. The fallen horseman is especially appealing to me, but countermark, faces, and fourree are not far behind. A zoom-in on this coin shows off the extent of the flan crack. This coin is one of those that I don't think I would trade for the same coin without flaws. Deppert-Lippitz 677 Period V, 225-195 BC, "MOI type" with ΦIΛIΔAΣ as magistrate, 2.32g, 15-16mm, AR hemidrachm of Miletos, Ionia. here's the other side
Fantastic images, @dougsmit . Are these made with focus stacking like some of your others or just in one shot? I've never managed to adequately focus stack using my more-challenging-to-reproduce photography approach but these are quite enviable.
Great closeup photos! What cameras/lenses are good for taking close up photos of coins? I would love to try it myself.
The horse's eye on these Carthaginian staters are often poorly struck. This example however is ok. Besides the eye, the other details like the muscles, nostrils and overall expression are all outstanding to me. The well executed dies reminds me of why I sometimes purchase "Greek" coins.
I collaborated with Classical Numismatics on this video, he's using the Ultra Zoom tool from my website that some of you might recognise (I've shared it once or twice on here before). This was a problem I aimed to tackle with my site, namely not being able to share high resolution images. But the second thing you mention, about reminding viewers what part of the image to enlarge and view is something I had a go at addressing very recently in the Ultra Zoom tool on my site. Previously you could only link to the first image in the Ultra Zoom gallery so you'd need to manually scroll to a specific coin and then zoom in on it. Now, I've been able to capture this information in the URL so you can share a link to a specific coin as well as the zoom level and X&Y co-ordinates., e.g. https://artemis-collection.com/showcase/ultra-zoom/#zoom=5.1598&x=0.5993&y=0.3247&id=1118 Building a website isn't for everyone but for those with one, or who are up to the challenge, I'm happy to share how the Ultra Zoom tool works and some of the code. It largely uses an existing open-source plugin (OpenSeaDragon) so I didn't have to do too much myself to get it working. Not sure about Doug but for the images in the Classical Numismatics video, they are all focus stacked. Typically the magnification is between 0.75x (e.g. for sestertii) and 1.25x (for some denarii or smaller denomination) and then I focus stack anywhere between 50 to 100 photos per side at 0.0625mm increments (which is a bit overkill). Switching from a 24MP APS-C to 42MP Full-Frame camera really made a big difference too, as I was able to capture so much more detail in every photo. I can personally recommend the Laowa 100mm f/2.8 2x Macro and this is the lens I use. The additional magnification above the usual 1x macro is quite useful for small coins but this lens is also incredibly sharp and well corrected for optical issues like chromatic aberration. On top of that, it's relatively cheap (e.g. compared to a Sony 90mm 1x Macro) and not too big but it is mostly a manual lens (manual focus, manual aperture - for the Sony version anyhow).
My samples were grabbed from several methods over the years, some stacked, some not. I am not a good enough technician to be able to repeat results and have made focus stacks using several different software methods looking for the best. The ones shown in the video employed a very complicated and expensive rig that moved the camera a tiny bit between each shot. I have done that manually using a focus rail or microscope and now prefer using the routine built into my camera which leaves the camera stationary and changes the focus setting on the lend for each shot but only works if the lens has autofocus. Both work. If everything in the shot is at the same distance (coin very low relief) stacking may not be necessary but, with ancients, that is not common.
I hear that a lot. Regarding focus stacking: Most of my images beyond 1:1 use focus stacking. Certainly all the ones that show tilted coins. My latest playing around has been using a microscope and stacks up to 30 images but each is different according to what I see. I have heard nothing bad about the Laowa but do not plan to buy one since I already have a decent 100mm Canon macro which can be used on extension tubes and which has autofocus so it allows use of the focus bracketing feature of my Canon RP mirrorless camera. I did see in the review that the Laowa has a rather coarse focus adjustment which would make it harder to use for focus stacking. My best focus stacked images have used older lenses I have accumulated in the last 55 years or so. Being one to carry things to excess, I offer a roughly 90 year old Leitz '3' microscope lens on the RP stacked from 25 input images with an added scale showing white lines 1mm apart. This much magnification is just too much but had to be tried. The subject is the tail of an Athenian obol owl. I need more input images to do it right but am looking for a better subject coin before I try again. This pair used a much lower power Bausch and Lomb objective only about 60 years old stacked from 30 images comparing two die matched denarii of Septimius Severus. This Gordian III and Tranquillina was done using the reversed 16-35 Canon staked from about 20 images. The arrow was added to point out the die centration layout dot separate from the flan centration pit that needs no arrow to be found. Focus stacking is fun.
Yeah for the Laowa you'd have to focus stack by moving the camera towards the subject rather than changing the magnification/focus like in-camera focus bracketing. I've heard advantages and disadvantages to both but I'm sure for our purposes, either method works about the same. I have a bunch of old lenses for macro as well (mostly enlarger lenses from the 70s/80s) and the quality in some of them is fantastic. Though at 0.75x-2x, the Laowa can't be beat so I use that for all my coin photography and only break out the older lenses for higher magnification needs. Your focus stacks of specific parts of the coin reminds me I must try stack-and-stitch again. I tried it awhile ago and think I shared the results here but it takes quite a bit of time and effort and at the moment I don't have a precise way of making X-axis (side to side) adjustments for the coin, only Y (up/down) or rotation.
Awesome pictures @dougsmit! I released a little article on my website today about some zoomed in coins actually. I'm not really sure about how to post images as I'm very new here, but here's the article: https://www.ancientnumis.com/articles/coin-microscope-pictures if anyone wants to see them. AncientNumis