Visit To Gigamacro

I visited Graham Bird and Gene Cooper of GIGAmacro yesterday. They invited me to meet with them at their Napa CA office and workshop to discuss the specialty lighting requirements for coin photography. The discussion went well beyond that and we talked optics, cameras, coins, and many more topics. What a fun afternoon!

They gave me the tour of their facility, which was surprisingly well-organized. They have a street-facing entrance with front office and demo space, meeting room, and office in front half, and an impressive workshop and shipping area in rear half.

One thing I was very impressed with was that they build the robotics and mechanics for XY table themselves. I'm sure a few components are outsourced but it appeared the majority of the system is machined and built, right there in Napa, including the controllers for the robotics.

They demo'd a XYZ setup for me, and I must say the control software is very impressive and (at least in my semi-educated view) quite intuitive. They indicated that one of the difficult tasks is to make the software highly functional yet intuitive such that folks with little photographic and robotics background can use the system easily. It's a tough task but the interface seems up to it.

I had earlier been impressed with their viewer software, which allowed me to easily view the very large files down to highest magnification with even a modest PC. Apparently a newer and even better version is on the way, and I'm looking forward to testing it out.

I plan to visit again to see their progress and to see how my coin lighting suggestions work out on their system. If anyone would like to join me, let me know as they offered to host a group demo. I'm thinking a Macro and Wine tour may be in order!