Coin Photo Setup

I just finished putting together another setup, and am getting quite good results with it.

Here is a picture of the latest setup:


Here are pictures taken with this setup of the same Morgan dollar from previous setups:

Full View of Dollar


Magnified View of Dollar


I've had several PMs asking about the stands. These are Bausch & Lomb StereoZoom microscope stands, with the ring-shaped mount replaced with a straight bracket for mounting the bellows. I made the brackets just long enough to extend above the top of the stand for best rigidity, but this also limits the focal length of the lens that can be used to around 100-110mm. I have tried to adapt 120mm and 135mm but I'd need to make a taller mounting bracket, which will be less rigid. Anyway, that's the story on the stand.

I've also had several PMs asking about adapting a point and shoot camera. Of course the bellows and lens are useless with point and shoots, but the stand doesn't give enough adjustment range on its own, so a focusing rail will be needed. I have some Vivitar focusing rails around, so may consider putting something together if folks are interested.

As a test of my latest setup, I took photos with it for a 1956-D/D RPM#1 I'm selling on ebay. Only the obverse and reverse photos were done using this
setup. The high magnification photo was done using my Bausch & Lomb MonoZoom7 setup.

Here are the photos taken with the latest setup and Nikon D7000:

Obverse:


Reverse:


High Mag done with MonoZoom7 and Tucsen 3MP

I use an Olympus camera set to marco mode, black foam background and natural light, click and point, here is the results

A few folks have expressed concerns about mounting a camera to the macro setups I am building. Which camera? Will it work? And a lot of
folks already have digital point and shoots that do a good job of taking macro photos but have asked how they can adapt the camera to the
stand. Of course it can't be done with the bellows or lens, but the stand offers precision focus adjustments and rigidity that are very desirable.
Well, take a look at the pictures below. What I've done is mount some focus rails to the stand rather than a bellows. I took pictures with two
different kinds of rails, and each mounted with the camera mount "low" and "high". The low case is for cameras with short focal length lenses
so you can get the lens near the coin. The high case is for longer focal lengths that require more working distance. What do you think? ...Ray

Soligor Focus Rail on Bausch & Lomb stand in the "high" position:


Soligor Focus Rail on Bausch & Lomb stand in the "low" position:


Vivitar Focus Rail on Bausch & Lomb stand in the "high" position:


Vivitar Focus Rail on Bausch & Lomb stand in the "low" position:


The Soligor focus rail extends the mount farther from stand upright, so is probably better for smaller point and shoot cameras. The Vivitar
has very little extension, so would be better for bigger cameras.

OK, riddle me this, rmpsrpms. You've just proven that 5x magnification with professionally-sharp results is possible using purely photographic equipment. Assuming your detail image is a 100% crop posted full-size....is it possible to double (no more, no less) that magnification using similar equipment?

That's the rough requirement for one aspect of the studio I am going to build, and so far the only appropriate tool I can envision is a Common Main Objective trinocular dissecting scope - I can't use the Greenough "angled" view as stitching will be involved and the final product will need to be flatfield.

If I can achieve this with photographic-realm optics for less than $2000 (lens only; camera and all mounting hardware are budgeted separately), it's a preferable alternative to buying a bespoke Nikon or Leica instrument. There will be requirements for greater magnification of single features, but I can reach that easily with a Greenough instrument costing far less.

Hmmm. Hadn't realized it was downsized; you're getting a whole lot more mag than I thought, factoring in the effective magnification of the monitor. May I ask a favor? Can you crop and post a full-resolution section of the 2 as shown here:



That should be about an 800px square at the original size of a 16MP image (per Nikon spec, which you shoot if I recall correctly). My guess is, the sharpness will not_quite be up to my projected needs. Your image, as downsized, is 95% of the desired sharpness but about half the size I need to see it. The ideal would be the square I've described, in crystal clarity.

Like I said, I'm afraid the solution is going to say Leica or Wild on the side.

Now. On a tangentially-related note: Is it possible to build a bellows setup such as you describe here, which has the second capability of being a copystand for a camera/lens combo? Such a setup would need to be able to position the actual camera attachment screw a minimum distance of 24" from the coin platform, to accommodate a dSLR w/dedicated lens in the 100mm range while retaining the capability to stand off sufficiently to image an entire 38mm+ coin. If such could be built, with a (coarse) dial height adjustment sufficient to hold 5lbs of camera/lens and move it through 10" vertical, and sell for $200 or less, you will corner the copystand market for coin photography.

There is nothing competitive to such specifications, bellows or not.

SuperDave...Here is a crop of approx the area you requested, 832x835 pixels:



And to your tangential request, in fact the setup I showed earlier in this post will almost do what you ask, though max height is only 18" so I'd need to make the mount/adapter 6 inches higher. This setup has around 9.5 inches of continuous vertical travel, though if the focus rail is reversed it adds an additional 7 inches of travel at the bottom end. So for SLR's with longer lenses, the "high" mount is used, and for point and shoots that have very close focus requirements, the "low" mount is used. Based on surplus parts could be built to sell for well under $200...Ray

SuperDave...no comments on the microscope stand plus focus rail?

Note that a cropped 1:1 image will never be as sharp as a high resolution image downsized to the same scale. Even 50% downsize greatly improves clarity. In your original request you said you were looking to double the magnification I was showing (~5X), no more no less, so I assumed a target of 10X mag. What I think I understand now is you are trying for equivalent 30x magnification, with final image size of 800x800, is this correct?