Need Advice For A Camera

My Canon Powershot a800 point and shoot arrived today.
I have many camera's.This looks a bargain no frills jobbie.(£30)
The lighting set up needs some work and then I will start.
I have about 10,000 coins to photograph...two daughters and a wife and maybe Grandma over Xmas will help.

Peter 1234, good luck also with your project, will be more fun with the family involved, looking forward to seeing some great results.!

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