Got My Camera Setup Today

They look straight to me.

Much betterer. Do you know why you've lost focus on the reverse of the Trime and the IHC?

It's a modified microscope stand, custom-built by CCF member rmpsrpms. I have one of his stands as well.

BELLOWS SETUP TIP OF THE DAY: Framing your shot

With the Canon tethering software, when you are in live view on PC monitor, you can turn on a grid pattern that helps with coin rotational alignment. The grid pattern is also customizable, so you can make more or fewer horizontal or vertical lines (independently) as needed to get the alignment to a particular coin if you want.

Getting the coin nicely aligned is usually a bit tricky since there is vertical and horizontal positioning as well as rotation to consider. The quick and dirty way to get perfect alignment is to make your magnification just a little on the low side so the coin is well within the boundaries of the final image size. For instance, your Rebel XS sensor is 3888x2592 pixels. For a final image size of 800x800, you would plan on a 3x downsize. This brings the original down to 1296x864, giving you 496 pixels in X and 64 pixels in Y to crop away. If you make the coin a bit smaller, say 750-780 pixels, you can leave a little room around it for a more natural vignetting. This gives you some room to not be so perfect in the original framing, so the coin can be placed a little off-center in Y (and very sloppy in X) and still come out perfect after cropping.

The real trick is in the rotation, and is another reason a bellows setup is very desirable. If you loosen the camera mount just a bit, the camera rotates freely. Once you get the coin "close" to the right position, you can rotate the camera to line it up perfectly, using the grid pattern as your guide. This greatly speeds framing since you don't need to touch the coin, just do a quick rotation of the camera and snap the shot. A quick downsizing by 3x, followed by a crop to 800x800, and you have a perfectly-framed shot every time.

Hey I think your just on a learning curve...You have some GREAT pics and some that are not quite there..Thats part of learning on how to use your equipment......Your WHOLE SET up is just slightly more than I bought My camera alone.....
You have been blessed from above, and CCF and RAY and DAVE to help you out with getting the costs down and getting started......and personnaly think you will improve greatly as you get to KNOW YOUR EQUIPMENT...I think your on the path.... Gene

You should be manually focusing every single shot. With the ability to see Live View on your monitor at full sensor size (note the magnification controls at the bottom right of the Live View screen), you need never have an out-of-focus shot again.

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Does it look any better or looks the same as before. I used the F8 for the half and F4 for the dimes. I also enlarged the screen to get a better view(should have done that in the first place to begin with).
I thought the pictures were dead on but that also tells me that I have long ways to go. Please tell me what you think of this set of pictures. One other questions how do I crop circles and put coins side by side with tag in the center?

You say you're enlarging the screen. Is this the first,


I will try your suggestions tonight and there is a testing site on this forum that I had over looked.