New Camera - Photo Experts Needed

The thing which strikes me is how much compromise your camera is having to make in order to get the coin lit - exposure is way slow and ISO way high. With 2-60w CFL equivalents, you ought to be able to get 1/13 @ ISO 200 or less. That said, I'd be working in a direction of shorter exposure, if the ISO setting isn't introducing too much noise - you'll need to pixel-peep the background to see what kind of noise is being generated, but I'd sure like to see exposures faster than 1/100.

How are the lights mounted and directed?

I would be looking to autofocus in your shoes - the camera's viewfinder simply lacks the resolution to show you the coin focused sharply enough. I focus manually, but I've got the coin projected at full magnification on a 24", 19x12 monitor....

So. Settings: AF Macro. Zoomed fully out - EXIF data should indicate 4.5mm focal length for this camera. Use Aperture Priority for the moment, with the widest-possible (lowest numerically) aperture. "Cloudy" white balance should be the best match for 6500k lighting. Let it autofocus.

Don't expect far better results than the point-and-shoots I've played with. That's not why you buy a camera like this - you buy a camera like this for its' insane zoom and broad range of abilities including HD video. This is one you absolutely do not use "only" for macro photography, although down the road with the addition of a Macro lens add-on (the other reason you choose it over a P&S), you're going to be shooting stuff that's indistinguishable from dSLR work at the sizes we post here.

Well, messed around again. Took some advice, did a lot of reading. Progess?


You can see the wiped date clearly, a little too strong! I like it though, lighting isn't the best. Hasnt been edited in CS5 yet.







Next, added the other light. Diffused a little too much. Will continue to experiment though.

To say the least. What's the actual diameter of the coin, in pixels, before downsizing?

OK. Postprocess full-size - it makes any sharpening you might use far more subtle in its' effect. Downsize by percentage - 50% or 25% rather than forcing to a specific number, which requires the software to interpolate and potentially misplace pixels whereas percentage reductions are simple math.

Look into what settings you may have available for in-camera processing, sharpening and noise reduction, and disable them to the greatest extent possible. You want to do any or all of that in the computer where you have far more sophisticated hardware and software. Your last pair of images are clear enough so I think I'm seeing a little oversharpening in-camera. Wish it would shoot RAW.

TonedMo87, how are you displaying your settings? Is this part of the camera programming? Mine falsh "briefly" after the image is taken on the display screen on my Canon SD790IS.

On my camera I have a button push to show and edit my video settings, which show contrast, sharpness, saturation and noise reduction. Its part of my camera's operation, I'm not sure if that's on yours or not. In my playback mode, I also have the ability to display every aspect of that setting on the screen as well, which is really helpful. If you check out your advanced properties on windows it should also give you some idea of what you're using. For example: Mine will say "Hard" on both contrast and sharpness cause they're set so high.

-Dan

A couple shots after being processed, I'm having a little bit of difficulty getting it exact. I used lots of other peoples photos for reference, but still a learning curve itself on processing coins.

I went more towards blue on the first one, which doesn't look as natural.



Went more towards yellow on this one, and I like the results better. Both were un-sharpened, upped the exposure and brightness and dropped the contrast a bit.