My Setup For Taking Coin Photos

I thought some people might want to see how I set up my camera to take the pictures posted in this thread on the VAM subforum here:
https://goccf.com/t/493689#4562207

I received a nice Nikon D60 SLR camera around 2010 as an anniversary present from my wife, and added a Nikon AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED lens for coin photography use. Since we lived in a smallish apartment at the time, I decided that I would use a tripod instead of building a dedicated copy stand in order to maximize our living space since everything can be set up and dismantled again in short order.

The camera plus lens weighs in at a couple of pounds or so (actually almost exactly 1 kg, of which 750 grams is just the lens), so I needed a sturdy tripod to support the weight. I settled on a Manfrotto 190XPROB aluminum tripod which has good support (up to 5kg), a built-in level indicator, and the arm can be folded to horizontal position so that I can point the camera straight down:



At first, I used a table top or chair with a variable number of books stacked up to get the right height for taking coin pictures. But more often than not, the level wasn't quite right, so I used a little table stand like this one:


The top connector screw is pivotable. I removed the little flat support at the end, and after finding a hexagonal nut at a hardware store which fits U.S. thread size (not that easy to find in Europe which has different threading standards), I fashioned a little wooden platform and drilled a hole to fit the nut (actually, it's three wooden slabs, one of which has the hole, and glued the slabs together after scraping out a little indentation where the upper slab meets the nut. Since the nut is a little thicker than one slab, this ensures a flat surface on the upper slab). I use a level while taking pictures and adjust the screw on the table tripod to tilt it in the desired direction if the platform isn't exactly level:



To manage the height of the platform comfortably (i.e. the distance between the camera lens and the coin), I bought a cheap wooden drawing stool of which the height is adjustable between 40cm - 65cm. This makes it easy to raise or lower incrementally. I can go from a distance for taking full-size pictures of Morgan dollars or other large coins all the way up to the limit of the lens' focussing distance in order to get closeup shots without having to extend or retract the legs of either of the tripods simply by rotating the seat of the stool. This saves a lot of time (and avoids movements which are not good for my back at my age...)


Finally, I have two gooseneck LED spotlights clamped to the table close to the corner so that I can get the light very close to the coin and at any desired angle. There is a third lamp which I can use if I want to make more all-around lighting instead of highlighting details on the coin. I only used the two gooseneck lamps for the pictures I posted over on the VAM thread. For some details, I get better results just using one lamp, so here you need to experiment a little.

Being able to rotate both the stool and the little tripod/platform independently enables changing the direction of the light source without moving and readjusting the lamps, too.

A couple of the pictures show a bottle cap where the coin would be -- I tried this but didn't notice much benefit from using it, and to avoid having the coin fall off of the cap while adjusting the platform and falling onto the floor (been there, done that! ) I just place the coin directly on a photographic gray card from which I have set the white balance manually. I used other backgrouns in the past -- blue art paper for silver, and pink art paper for copper and gold look very nice. However, this sometimes introduces problems with the white balance, so I go for neutral grey now.

Camera settings I used for the Morgan dollar pictures:

Image format NEF (RAW);
VR: Off (Vibration Reduction; there is a switch on the lens for that, but it isn't needed since the camera is mounted on the tripod);
Aperture priority mode ("A" on the selector dial located close to the shutter button on the camera);
Aperture set at between f/5.6 and f/11 depending on which gets better results, and how much light is available;
Timed release mode set at 5 seconds.

Images were downloaded from the SD card to my laptop which runs a Linux Ubuntu 24.04 operating system and exported to JPEG format using the `darktable` program. In darktable, I set the RGB levels to `auto` and cropped the histogram just a tiny bit at both ends in order to optimize the contrast. Cropping the coin pictures was done in the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation program) using the `Ellipse` select tool to crop the circular area occupied by the coin, or if it is filling out the frame vertically, the `Rectangle` tool can do this as well. No other manipulation or filtering was performed in the GIMP except for rotation of the cropped image.

I noticed that even back when the Nikon D60 was new on the market, it got mixed reviews because it was essentially a remake of the D40 but about $300 more expensive! Some drawbacks I ignored because they didn't really concern me since I was using it exclusively for taking coin pictures. Indeed, I'd have to buy another lens if I wanted to use it for something different.

I'm open to any and all suggestions how I can improve on this. Thanks for looking!