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 Replies: 41 / Views: 4,883 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
Here's everything put together:  And this is literally the first image taken through the bellows and 75ard1:  Oops, I had rotated the camera and coin 90 degrees, but didn't move the Jansjos.  That's more like it!  And there's the 100% crop. That lens is no joke. I've done basically nothing to these. I just opened them in Adobe Camera Raw, turned off all sharpening, cropped them, downsized them 1/5 in Photoshop and saved the JPEGs. I don't really know how good the color or brightness is because I'm working on a horrible monitor, but for having done no work I can't even believe how good they look. They might be too contrasty/punchy but I haven't really played around with exposure or diffusion techniques or anything yet. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
36741 Posts |
Wow, super nice! The color looks very natural. Maybe just a little more light.
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Moderator
 United States
14463 Posts |
on this monitor, the cent has sort of a dark brass coloring BTW - nice setup and nice pictures  |
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
4132 Posts |
And here's with the bellows at full extension:  And a 100% crop:  |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
3167 Posts |
WOW! Can I ask how much you paid for that?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1298 Posts |
Captain, looking good. You will be up there with Ray and Super Dave in no time!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
@noahs: Well, it was from an original roll of 1956-D cents which I got for ten bucks, so it was technically 20 cents, but this was one of the "rejects" that was too spotty.  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4037 Posts |
Nice pics. What are your aperture settings for these shots?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
What's the notch between f/5.6 and f/8? I think that's what I was using for the full-coin shot, and I stopped it down to f/8 for the max-mag shot. I don't know where the trade-off starts happening with diffraction.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
Alright, here's a toned MS67 1945 Mercury dime. I thought I had captured its "soul" pretty well with the ol' Droid.  How's the new setup do? Cropped and downsized 4x:   100% crop:  This was at f/5.6. The smile detectors I built were a complete failure. I settled on a down-reflector sorta thing. It took quite a bit more work to get this to the right exposure and contrast - the reflector thing seems to confuse the camera's metering somewhat. I can't believe I'm getting these results this fast. The slab just disappeared with the right lighting setup. It probably shows up dark to everyone else, I'm going to give these another once-over when I get to my calibrated screen at work. Edited by CaptainFwiffo
07/27/2012 12:46 am
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Valued Member
United States
275 Posts |
Salute to the Captain! very nice! You have the right setup. I like it.  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4037 Posts |
Quote:
What's the notch between f/5.6 and f/8? I think that's what I was using for the full-coin shot, and I stopped it down to f/8 for the max-mag shot. I don't know where the trade-off starts happening with diffraction. That's f6.7 (sqrt(5.6*8). The Cent is at ~0.8x, and the dime at ~0.9x, so your effective aperture is f12 on the cent shot and f10.6 on the dime. The T3i has pretty small pixels, and its diffraction limit is f6.8. So you are way beyond the limit, and in fact you will always be diffraction limited with this lens at these magnifications, even at f4. For the max-mag shot I'd estimate the magnification at around 2.5x, so at f8 your effective aperture is f28, way beyond the diffraction limit. You can thus do much better with a bigger aperture, but the tradeoff will be DOF and to get both full sharpness and DOF you will need to stack. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
Wow, now I understand the math. I thought some of those luster sparkles looked like an airy disk... For full-coin dime and cent pictures, what sort of crazy optics would I need to be limited by my pixels instead of diffraction? A really fast lens? A wider lens? Longer? Here's one that's always been a bugger to capture. It's a much more frosty type of luster, and the slab is really cruddy which doesn't help. It always turns out muddy and grayish even though in hand it's got a snowy quality. The setup was similar but I needed to fire up a third Jansjo to pump get the illumination I wanted.    Edited by CaptainFwiffo
07/27/2012 01:27 am
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4037 Posts |
Quote:
For full-coin dime and cent pictures, what sort of crazy optics would I need to not be limited by my pixels instead of diffraction? A really fast lens? A wider lens? Longer? You need a lens that is diffraction-limited across the field at f3.5 (infinity aperture) or bigger at 0.8x. There is only one lens I know of that is capable of this performance...the 105mm/2.8 Printing-Nikkor. The 55mm/2.8 Micro-Nikkor comes close to this but is not as flat. I suspect a few of the newer line-scan lenses designed for 5um pixels can do OK, but I don't have any data on them. I also suspect the Scitex lenses may be able to achieve close to this performance, but again no data, just my observation. For landscapes and portraits there is still some more to be had with smaller pixels, but for macro photography, the 4.3um pixels of the T2i/T3i are about as small as is practical given available optics. Higher pixel count in a DX sensor beyond this level is an exercise in diminishing returns. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
Heh, well since that lens costs more than my whole setup, and the nice monitor I want to get, and the widget to calibrate it... I'm gonna just say that I've already got sharpness beyond anything I need.
Any critiques of what I've shot so far?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1620 Posts |
Im no expert so I'm gonna ask what is that microscope called and what are you using for the pics its amazing man. Oh and just under lincolns chin on that wheat I think I saw a tiny dust particle lol
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Replies: 41 / Views: 4,883 |
Posted 07/26/2012 8:23 pm
