New Coin Photography Setup - Thoughts?

Great question! I went with Nikon because I don't want to shoot only coins. After looking into entry level DSLR's in my price range, and weighing all the reviews I could find, the Nikon D3300 stood out as my best choice overall and should last me many many years moving forward. I approached camera choice from the aspect of landscape/wildlife photography and having the most recent technology. The Canon offerings in my price range were a bit lacking in many areas I felt were important, at least at this point in time, which surely will change in the future. I'm not particularly brand loyal, having owned a Canon in the past with great results. A little bit of extra work is no big deal compared to what I have been doing!

Thanks for these insights. I hadn't even thought of tethering as an option to speed up processing. I was just going to use a card reader as I always have. If I get annoyed with that I will have to look into tethering options for Nikon. I don't typically do a lot of coins at once, usually one or two in a session, so I don't imagine not having this as an option will bother me too much, but having the ability to see the image taken on a large screen immediately is nice for making sure you get it right the first time.

Is MS Paint still acceptable to use in terms of cropping and combining images? Since these images are mainly for posting and archiving, I'm not all that concerned with having monstrous images with super zoom, just sharper images than what I'm used to getting out of a point and shoot. I know I can do more and interesting with Photoshop or similar, but don't really want to pay for it. Is Photoshop Elements worthwhile? It would be nice to black out backgrounds and add slab info or custom info, something that looks horrible using Paint. I haven't used Photoshop in over 10 years, but I might be able to remember how it works once I have it in front of me. Thoughts?

Being able to do that all from a computer sounds pretty sweet. I will definitely have to research tethering for a Nikon.

One thing I'm not sure of is using a bellows. What about using an extension tube instead of a bellows? A 105mm macro lens? Other than knowing that an extension tube is fairly inexpensive compared to the cost of lenses, how costly is an appropriate bellows setup and are they easily packed up and stored and brought back out again (i don't really have a permanent photography space).

For the time being though I'm going to have to learn with just the kit lens. I've read that it can take decent macro photos, but obviously its going to be lacking vs the correct dedicated macro equipment. I have time yet to determine what will work best in my situation, which is why I am posting here! Any and all input appreciated. I read Dar's photo thread, it's been great! I hope I am not duplicating any questions here.

Extension tubes do quite well for the task, aside locking you into a specific magnification. A type which has the appropriate electrical passthrough to allow autofocus and aperture setting will run you close to $100.

Nikon's 105 Macro is a superb lens, capable of turning a ton of your money into images of a quality equal to any here. At one specific magnification.

A bellows is about $50 for a good used one, and will allow you to leverage any number of film duplicating lenses available on ebay in the $25-50 range to equal that 105mm Macro, at whatever magnification you choose to set. Most only work well up to 2x magnification - some a more narrow range than that but at $25 apiece you can afford two. 2x magnification, with your 24MP sensor, is up to about any sort of imaging you'd care to need aside maybe sextupled stars or a microcrystalline study of lustrous fields.

A bellows has a minimum-possible magnification effect, because they have a length dimension even fully closed and serve as an "extension tube" (that's all they are, length-adjustable extension tubes). My personal rig when closed and used with a 75mm focal length has no difficulty getting a whole Morgan onto the sensor. Which, for the record, is a magnification of about 0.4:1. For you, a magnification of 1:1 (which in photography qualifies as "magnification") will completely fill your sensor with a 15.6mm coin (just smaller than a Half Dime). Which means you're going to have an image of a Half Dime that's 4000px in diameter.

You can mount one, preferably the type using an integral focus rail because focus in such a rig means moving the whole thing closer or farther from the subject, on a tripod dangled over the corner of a table. That complicates things because you then have to square the rig each time you shoot, but that will be the same problem whatever lens you mount to the camera. My own setup, using a modified microscope stand from rmpsrpms, takes up 8" by 6" of table space plus lighting....

This is why we push bellows rigs with film duplicating lenses. They're extremely cheap, extremely flexible and provide results on par with $750 bespoke Macro lenses.

I went with the 85mm micro Nikkor lens for my D3200 with the close up filter rather than the 105... I use it for other purposes too. However, it will not fit a teleconverter like the 105.


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I can get Photoshop Elements for less than $50 so I think I'll be getting that. I have seen some amazing results posted here using that program and as I mentioned before I have some experience using Photoshop in the past. I thought the max file size for CCF was 100kb? Up til now I have been using a file resizer that is automatic (select photos to resize, and it just batch processes them). While this makes things go WAY faster it lacks a great deal in terms of controlling the quality of the images. Elements should resolve this issue. I've looked at Gimp but just don't like the UI.

mgillette that is impressive with the 85mm lens. You say you had a close up filter on it? What exactly is that? There are a couple coins where having that kind of zoom would be beneficial to me, but overall I won't need that kind of magnification. But it sure would be nice to have! (Edit: I just looked at this lens, I think it just made my short list of lenses to pick up next. 11" minimum focal length means it's not going to get in the way of lighting!)

Also it appears that tethering is currently lacking options for the D3300, though there are a couple programs that work, but without being able to auto-focus from the application itself, which is a drawback for sure. (Edit: I have found one that works with all features and its free)

Digicamcontrol supposedly works with the D3300, as some users have discovered. I can't justify choosing a camera based only on tethering. Not being able to tether is still going to be better than using a point and shoot setup for a host of reasons. I'm so used to pain in post processing right now, I won't notice the difference to something I've never even experienced. With that said, I hope to get digicamcontrol to work. If not, I'll work it out, or someday set up a dedicated rig using an old canon dslr on the super cheap.