Dailing In The Details - Coin Community Forum

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Author	Replies: 8 / Views: 1,466
aladinslamp Pillar of the Community United States 3076 Posts	Posted 09/20/2012 02:57 am I haven't been into collecting for over a year now as I got bit by the photo bug,.. researching and trying out a lot of lenses, techniques We have all been reading about for the past year and then for some of us... Lots of toys to play with but just a few things really make the difference in stabilizing and improving the learning curve.. The copy stand,, which I actually bought a nice and CHEAP photo enlarger just for the stand, paid $50 total. came with 2 rodenstock lenses, 50mm and 75mm , and photo stuff for developing pictures... I am waiting for my jansjo's in the mail so I used the old table top CLF bulbs for these pic's the lens I went with for coins and bugs and such is a Vivitar Series 1 90mm macro lens I got for $150 I am about 15 inches from the dollar for these shots, coins sitting on top of a mirror, remarkably appears as a black back round.. I bought this coin trolling on the bay, not actually wanting it, but tought it was a decent deal for its condition, as well as its VAM.. let you think on that one,, but consider the "U" in UNUM for starters and we can Vam-It later... Hear are some shots.. still need to dial in some of the details but these are for starters Getting the whole silver dollar is one factor many don't have to deal with when choosing a lens, and I say this is because the size of the lens size IS VERY important to what your trying to capture...Magnification is actually a very simple part of the process when using the camera with bellows and/or extention tubes/tele converters or both, I can get 2 digits to fill my entire sensor of 15MP,,,using a 105mm lens,, it can get down right stupid when using a 28mm or less,,,lens sizes are meant for there application.. any way I'm anxious to get some details dialed in..and suggestions...G Report this Post to the Staff

aladinslamp Pillar of the Community United States 3076 Posts	Posted 09/22/2012 12:49 am Those pics appear a mite dark to me online...I did get some Jansjo's in the mail, I can see multi-colors on the coin, others are speaking of them, apparently its the light spectrum of the light it self... I can see why many are using the diffusers for this type of light...Still working with the set up, these are better but not quite where I want to be with them...The old lens seems to capturing an even focus across the coin. need to work on the lens lighting and exposure settings.. Report this Post to the Staff
aladinslamp Pillar of the Community United States 3076 Posts	Posted 09/22/2012 01:05 am One of the great things about NOT HAVING all the things you need, is improvization..Many here have given home made remidies that result in decent results..The OBV photo above shows some of the sparkly read and blue spotting on the coin from the light, so I tried some double layered tissue paper to try and diffuse some of it away, I think it did ok, at least till I can work on some of the diffusers you all have shown here on the forum.. these are getting better but not quit there... Report this Post to the Staff
aladinslamp Pillar of the Community United States 3076 Posts	Posted 09/23/2012 01:57 am One of the great things in taking photo's and observing others photo's you can really get a feeling of what the outcome the picture your trying to take should look like in the end...Reviewing what you did, and the changes you make are the learning curve that will allow you to repeat the final outcome..This is what we are aiming for so when we continue to shoot additional coins we can expect the best final outcome's.. In the first shot's above, I used the Vivitar 90mm macro lens with CLF bulbs..to bulky, and the color was to dark and almost no representation of the true silver color of the coin in hand...Lighting adjustments and some diffusion brought a better result, but not the color needed....Jansjo lamps and more lighting adjustments tonight are much more successful Not perfect but much much better....I do believe the lens itself though very nice for its famed reputation in its own applications, is not the best for coins, perhaps due to the fact its depth of field is very narrow when dialing it into focus..I still have to work on its application there.. I will be trying some 100/105mm enlargers to see how they compare, but over all its much closer to what I'm trying to achieve... Report this Post to the Staff
aladinslamp Pillar of the Community United States 3076 Posts	Posted 09/23/2012 02:32 am Next I have tried an old Telsar Anastigmat 1:4.5 lens...real old school.. with some post processing... a little closer yet... I may have to try the post processing on the old Vivitar to see what it yields... Report this Post to the Staff
aladinslamp Pillar of the Community United States 3076 Posts	Posted 09/23/2012 02:56 am Back with the Vivitar 90mm Macro, and post processing. Think I'm getting much closer now...over all color and detail is good.. Large coins/silver highly reflective coins are not easy to get good results with.. Report this Post to the Staff
aladinslamp Pillar of the Community United States 3076 Posts	Posted 09/23/2012 03:25 am Repeating the result, I took another coin than the above, which all pictures are of the same coin... Here is a different coin and highly reflective,,and thinking twice about the Vivitar.. All in all it takes some time to figure out each lens and what it likes, and sticking to the main principles of coin shooting, cuts down many of the variables.. Report this Post to the Staff
rmpsrpms Pillar of the Community United States 4038 Posts	Posted 09/23/2012 10:17 am Gene...photos are looking good. My only concern is inconsistency of color balance. The Jansjos have a color temp of around 3000K, which is approx the same as tungsten. Does your camera have a tungsten setting for white balance? Setting for a fixed white balance won't correct for everything, and you'll see small differences between lenses or with different amounts of diffusion/diffusers, but it makes it all so easy since you don't have to mess with it all the time or do much if anything in post processing...Ray Contact me for photographic equipment or visit my home page at: http://macrocoins.com Report this Post to the Staff
aladinslamp Pillar of the Community United States 3076 Posts	Posted 09/24/2012 11:09 pm Ray your absolutely correct, it is the lighting..or rather the "White Balance mode". The difference between lamp type's is slight but important. So I went back to the basics, I set mine to Custom, and Broke out the White back round sheet .... TOOK A SHOT WITH NO COIN letting the camera sensors adjust itself to my back round color....This is something I learned and forgot about long ago...not just choosing the lighting type, but taking a shot and allowing the sensors to adjust themselves to my set up...the back round and the coin were 2 different colors so it wasn't working correctly.....Here's the pudding...DMPL tuff to take pics of... now back to simple cropping and resizing.... Report this Post to the Staff
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