Guess The Light Source

Yes it seems to work with most coins. Kind of strange really using a flashlight. Whatever works I suppose Lol.

BU copper 2 cent.

That last one you posted is the best coin photo Ive ever seen. How far is your camera from the coin? Are you using optical zoom?

I suppose it is 3 hobbies. I do a lot of science photography like astro-photography and infrared. That's on another forum.

Specifically the flashlight is a Fenix P2D Q4 Cree I think. 5mm superbright clusters are not as bright and tend to have a funny colour, although I suppose that can be corrected.

The camera is about 38cm (just over a foot) above the coin. I also use a screw on Sigma achromatic closeup lens. I zoom in using pretty much all of the 10x optical zoom and with very small coins a little digital.

Latest experiments using incandescent flashlights seem to work well also, with appropriate colour correction of course.

An AU 1871s Shield sov with incan flashlight bounced off the ceiling.

Ask as many questions as you want.

The camera is a Fuji S5600 (now outdated) on a copy stand. At the distance it's positioned from the coin it does need the closeup lens to focus. If I moved the camera closer and didn't use as much zoom it would focus, but then I wouldn't be able to illuminate the coin as well and may have camera shadow.

I shoot at full 5mp resolution and resample down later. Here's a couple of crops from the original image that have not been resized. After a little cropping a coin comes out to about 1800x1800 pixels.

I must admit I didn't actually try it without the closeup lens before. Just tried it now and the camera has to be so close to the coin that the lens casts a shadow, at least for ceiling bounce, so it can't be done on this model camera without some sort of closeup lens to extend the camera away from the coin.

Although it's generally smart to shoot (pun intended) for a fast shutter speed in macro photography, the static nature of this nice lends itself to slower shutter speeds. Judging from Learjet's use of unconventional light sources (and he's nothing if not creative in that aspect! ), he's probably down around 1/10 or 1/8, maybe 1/4, at f/4 or f/5.6.

It's a question I'd like to know the answer to, as well.

Learjet, if you're reaching the point where the camera is using digital zoom, back out and do that part of the zoom in post-processing. All it's doing is cropping and refilling the sensor with what's left, and you can accomplish that more accurately with something like the Gimp rather than the camera's built-in software, which is less sophisticated. Not that I'm trying to tell you what to do, since your skills at least equal if not exceed mine, but you might as well maximize the quality of some already superb photography.

Just for the record, I've archived almost all of my high-resolution stuff, full-size, at http://www.compucoin.com/gallery2/main.php They're way too big to host at Coin Community - they get downsized automatically.

Hi guys, I always stop down to F8, which is the max my camera will do. The shutter speed varies between about 1 and 6 seconds. Yes that's 6 seconds not 1/6 of a second at around ISO 200. Plus I bracket exposures. The light meter sometimes tells lies on certain coins. The Fuji has full manual control which I make use of eg shutter, F stop, white balance and focus. The shutter is tripped by the self timer to avoid vibration.

I started photography 28 years ago with a manual 35mm camera and ever since have never really trusted automatic settings.

Maybe I should get a higher power closeup lens to fill the frame without use of digital zoom. I know I may as well not use it (digital), but it just seems to help frame the shot and I can see to focus better.

One of these years I might get a digital SLR, but I'm kind of happy with what I have at present, even though I know an SLR would be better.