Need Advice For A Camera

It's pretty easy with a USB microscope. I may not get the results that the slr's get but I can live with that for the very small amount of space my set up takes.

That's a beautiful pic, 52Raymo. What's the cost of a USB microscope?

the thing about a microscope is the same I mentioned before, it will not be something you can take pictures outside with. I believe allot of people find that taking pictures of coins are harder than they thought it would be but it gets easier with practice. There is definitely a big difference between taking a picture with a camera of your family or house or any other picture you would normally see than taking pictures of small metal objects like coins. I have seen photographers struggle with taking "good" shots of coins, I have also seen some people be able to take some amazing shots of coins that shows the toning and the luster very well but can't take a picture of anything else worth a hoot. I guess its just what you get used to taking pictures of and take the time to learn how to do it correctly. I had the camera that took the pictures I posted in this thread for years before I ever got shots I was satisfied with and I took pictures quite a bit. The ones I was taking before were alright but they were nowhere near as good as the later pictures I was taking with it.


Edit: to show what I was talking about I went and looked through the archives of this forum and found one of the first pictures I had posted on this site and I am sure you will be able to see the difference between then and the one I posted earlier in this thread. This picture was taken with the exact same camera as the other picture was taken with.

The picture was alright to show what I was trying to show but was out of focus and I was actually using a loupe in front of the lens to take the picture instead of being in macro mode.

the one above was one of my first shots at coin photography and you can see a difference between where I started (above) and where I finally got to (the pictures posted on the first page). Just about any camera should do an alright job for coins if you take the time to learn what the camera likes and what it doesn't. Like I said I had that same camera for years and took probably thousands of shots during that time between the shot on this page and the one on the first page. I was very happy with the later shots and the only reason I upgraded to the dSLR camera was....heck I really don't know why to tell you the truth because I sure am not very happy with the photographs I am getting with it because the camera is way over my head and not sure I will ever get the hang of it because I get to aggravated with it when trying to get good shots

Morgans are definitely the "Main" focus of my collection. I had started collecting an MS-64 Morgan set with all dates and mint marks when I first started but then switched gears when it was almost complete and decided I wanted MS-66 and above coins. I have had one major Morgan VAM discovery in my collecting the series that was featured in CoinWorld magazine 3 times with one being the cover story, It was also named VAM of the Year by SSDC so I have been very lucky with collecting Morgans. It can definitely be an enjoyable series and can also seem overwhelming at times as well, but that is what keeps me coming back for more I guess. How to divert coin money into camera money is a hard question to answer as it will be different for everyone. You are in a good position looking for a camera right now as Black Friday is coming up and I am sure there will be some really nice sales on some really good cameras out there by someone. You may want to do some searching and see if any of the cameras you are thinking about are on sole anywhere for a price you can afford

The CW article isn't online as far as I know but you can read the 25+ pages here when I first discovered there was something different about this coin https://goccf.com/t/73683&whichpage=1. This is another small article on a webpage that was written about it also http://www.coinlink.com/News/us-coi...1878-vam-85/

yeah its allot of reading and was very exciting when it was happening