I know, I'm a moron, and I probably could have gotten the same results with my 2mp Digital Elph S110, and my wife has a Nikon D70. In my defense, I have spent a lot of time since I first posted here trying to improve my results with those two cameras. I think I did improve on what I had before, but I could never quite get as close as I wanted to. Even at "full size" the coins were, well, not that big. These were in fact limitations of the equipment, even if they don't really apply to the web (where you can't reasonably post a 3888x2592 size jpeg, haha).
Anyways, I have been jonesing more and more lately to take pictures of coins, and of other things too. So, after realizing this is something I'm really enjoying and spending a lot of time doing anyways, I just couldn't resist the allure of a newer SLR body. And it doesn't help that all my friends shoot Canon (5D, 1DmkII, etc.).
So I took money I should have spent on coins and spent it on a camera rig. I picked up a Canon 40D, a 100mm f/2.8 1:1 Macro, and an el-cheapo f/1.8 50mm prime, along with some cheap filters to protect the lenses and a bag. Of course, it's more like 160mm and 88mm given the crop factor of the sensor, but what the hey !
It was probably a huge waste of money, but wow; I have only spent an hour with this camera and I can really see myself getting addicted to this.
I can get 1:1 magnification! I feel like a kid in a candy store. My wife told me to just get some extender thingies for her lens to make it into a macro to get the same result, but I'm stubborn. Plus, I hate having to wait to use her camera when she's using it! The other day she spent hours just taking pictures of flowers for goodness sake, when there were much more beautiful coins waiting to be photo'd !
So anyways, now we can both be taking photos and our marriage can again be tranquil! Hahaha.
Seriously though, I've read other posts here, and also reviews elsewhere, and I had to decide between the 40D and the Rebel (XT, XTi). Big price difference ($600?).
If it were only for shooting coins, I'd have gone with the Rebel. But, the features that made me drop the extra cash are:
-6fps instead of 3fps - faster action shooting
-Reports of better high ISO quality
-3 "profiles" where each profile remembers "all" settings, making switching between coins and action pretty easy
-"Live" capability
The first two are a bigger deal for sports type photography I want to do. I took my point and shoot to events in the past and took pictures and they always sucked - impossible to get any action without blur out of that camera. And forget taking a lot of shots quickly. My wife's Nikon D70 is about like the Rebel in terms of consecutive shooting speed, but it's lowest lense is f/4 and it's just TOO light restrictive for indoor sports, especially when shooting 800 or 1600 iso on her camera is horribly grainy. So, in theory, I may be getting slightly better indoor sports performance with better high ISO quality and the ability to shoot 6 shots per second (for a few seconds).
As for the other two features, they are probably just glamour and who knows how much I'll really use them. The live feature seems promising though, because already my neck is sore from setting up hundreds of shots through the viewfinder on a tripod to do macro work. The idea of being able to connect the camera (on the tripod) via usb to my PC and see what the sensor sees, and fire off the shutter from the keyboard is . . . nice. But I haven't actually done that yet, so the feature may not do what I hope, or be as nice as I wish. We'll see. I'll write back again when I have a chance, since it's gotten late tonight.
Now, back to trying to get larger-than-sensor size images of a
Mercury dime before bed... hahahahaha!
Posted 01/04/2008 4:19 pm
