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 Replies: 10 / Views: 1,750 |
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Valued Member
494 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
4037 Posts |
09VDB isn't axial, right? I love the look of the Peace dollar but not so fond of the first Two Cents, the axial technique produces an odd shadow pattern. What is your aperture setting on the lens/camera? |
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Valued Member
 494 Posts |
I guess a little more info is in order... Camera: Sony a700 Lens: Quantaray 70-300 TeleMacro (cheapo) ISO: 250 Aperture: f5.6 - f6 Shutter: 1/250 - 1/10 Lighting was a swing arm with a reveal bulb - camera's WB was set on tungsten - Post processed for sharpening and contrast in Light Room - not much though. Used glass from a cheap picture frame that produced a ton of fringing/chromatic aberrations that were easy enough to eliminate in lightroom by shifting red/cyan and yellow/blue on highlighted edges. The lighting on the 2 1987's actually was able to bring out the surface detail extremely true to life IMO. The 09 VDB was slabbed so I had to move the light/gobo around to avoid a glare from the holder. I plan on making a more sophisticated setup for my ebay sales very soon - I don't see axial lit photos of anything on ebay (or very rarely). |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
You can do axial lighting on slabbed coins, you just have to make sure the glare is as even as possible (using diffusion on the light source) so you can subtract it in post. You can make the slab almost disappear by just bringing up the black level. You also want to shoot in the lowest available ISO and shoot in RAW if the camera supports it to avoid introducing noise or banding when you start stretching out the histogram. Getting the glare even is the hardest part.
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Valued Member
494 Posts |
I tried some on ISO 100, but was on a wobbly table that was being effected by me breathing LOL!
and I always shoot RAW... exactly for the reasons you mentioned. I actually am a pro photog in the real world, can light anyone to make them look their best.... but I swear.... Lincoln, Liberty, and Kennedy have been my toughest subjects!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4132 Posts |
You're not using a tripod?
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Valued Member
494 Posts |
yes... it was on the table... the minimum focusing distance is 3.5 feet for that particular lens so I had to get it pretty far away
have a manfrotto joystick-grip ball head with a manfrotto tripod.
the table just sucks... lol
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4037 Posts |
OK, now I'm curious about the lens settings. Are you at 300mm? Can you get closer with 70mm? Conventional wisdom is that longer is better for macro, but it is not true. In fact, shorter is better for both reduced sensitivity to shaking and for overall sharpness. Couple other questions:
Does the lens have a tripod mount or are you using the camera mount?
How big is the coin on the original image?
And a corollary to the above...how much are you cropping the image?
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Valued Member
494 Posts |
between 200 - 300
can only set up Macro past 200
lens does not have a tripod mount... using a quick release plate fastened to the camera
cropping about 30-40% .... the original images have more of the table in them... maybe about half a coins length
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4037 Posts |
Reason I asked for settings details is the '87-P Cent shot is pretty sharp, but the '87-D is not and neither are the Peace dollars. f5.6 should produce a sharp image if all else is working properly. Also, the Peace dollars and Cents are nearly the same size, so that means either you're resizing differently, or are not at full magnification on the Dollars, yet the Cent is sharper? The fuzziness in the Peace dollar looks like diffraction (but should not be at f5.6...) while the '87-D cent looks like it's just not focused well. Odd combination of circumstances that are tough to integrate into any suggested path to improve. In general, fuzziness in a macro image can come from: - poor focus (due to autofocus error, poor depth of field due to too large aperture, etc) - diffraction due to too small aperture (effective aperture, so worse for higher magnifications) - camera vibration due to setup not being rigid (worse at slower shutter speeds) - shutter shake (worse at higher magnifications) - lens aberrations (worse at larger apertures) |
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Valued Member
494 Posts |
thanks for the tips rmpsrpms! I plan on creating a more ridgid/permanent setup to photograph for my ebay sales... looking for a good piece of glass to shoot through - I've heard scanner bed glass is good for this application - anything will be better than a cheap frame glass.. |
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Replies: 10 / Views: 1,750 |
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Posted 08/04/2012 12:22 pm
