Are Reasonable Pictures To Much To Ask For

I skip every one of their listings because of that exact reason.

Watch out online and at thrift stores for a copy stand.

A setup like this is super easy to use.

Place coin on base, click mouse to focus, click to capture, focus.

Dave , you do what you have to do . It is a miracle with what you have gone through , your wife can help at any level.
Sure sometimes we all take lousy scans and pics. I am as guilty as anyone.
Your reputation and feedback on ebay is impecible and anyone who purchases something that they don't like can always return it to you, this I know.
Take Care and all the best ! See you at the Vancouver 2 day show in September. Jack Noble Paccoin

Hello People,
I would be very interested in a stand as shown by cpence.. I bought one of those microscopic ones at the ANA and have never been able to get the wife to use it (I am also guilty)
The one that you pictured there looks very straight forward,, All I would need is to set up a large enough area to have her work the pictures..
Please let me now if there is somewhere that I could purchase.
I will try pretty much anything that can assist my buyers.
Dave & Suzy Hunt

Dave (a respectable name, indeed ), I've a self-interest in seeing if we can help make your lot better, as I have shifted my concentration to Canadian Large Cents and you've a number of them listed at all times. Being rather picky about what I purchase, though, I've been unable to patronize your business due to the lack of detail available in the imagery.

So one need not assign altruistic motives to this offer of help. Purely selfishness.

I use a setup similar to what cspence posted. The camera is vertically mounted looking straight down on the coin - the easiest way to keep camera and coin perfectly square, an important factor - and all camera operation save turning it on may in certain cases be operated by mouse and keyboard, leveraging remote control software available for many dSLR cameras. I personally use Canon equipment for a few reasons.

In my case, I use a Canon 1000D (Rebel XS) which may be had used for less than US$100 (I paid $84 for one of mine), and a Nikon El-Nikkor 75mm lens for the image which follows, that can be purchased for US$40 or less. It's a used film duplicating lens, formerly purposed for blowing up negatives into print-size projections. These lenses, by nature, are sharply-focused (pun intended) on a skillset completely in line with what we as coin photographers require from our images. This is what that $84 camera and $40 lens are capable of, presented here at half of the original size. Note, I used technique and not postprocessing to "fade" the background:



Now, what may be a limiting factor in your case is that these duplicating lenses need to be manually adjusted for focus; I do not know what level of motor skill is present which may make this difficult. If this process is ruled out, then it will be necessary to use an autofocusing lens, which will increase cost but at no loss in quality.

The second factor, of course, is postprocessing. As you see, the image above has been aligned vertically and cropped closely, permitting the maximum amount of coin detail to be presented in the smallest possible space. In addition, it's been downsized in terms of both physical pixels and quality level to reduce filesize, to be appropriate for online posting. This process can, to varying extents, be scripted to greatly reduce the number of clicks (and technical skill) required to get from Point A to Point B, including archiving steps.

I've been teaching coin photography technique online between various fora for ten years and more, and will be more than happy to see what can be done for you in this unique case. As a Moderator, I usually prefer to engage in this process publicly to the benefit of my "employer," but understanding there are sensitive medical issues involved I would be more than happy in this case to move off-Forum for the specifics.

You are obviously a deserving and reputable seller - for me, the endorsement from Roger is all it takes to motivate my best efforts - and I believe we can help move your business to the next level while still engaging your spouse as fully as possible.

There's another seller (lighthouse) that also uses a scanner for his pictures.

His pictures are far worse.

Greg's a great guy, but his scanned pictures is definitely doing him more harm than good.

Greg, if you're reading this, please see my previously posted response.

Could not have been said any plainer and I agree 100%..except maybe "buy a GOOD digital camera and keep the coin parallel to the lens".

..and...

Take a lot of extra digital photos and only keep the clear and in focus ones..