Any One Have Experience With This Book?

Have never heard of it, but it looks very worthwhile. Give us a review when you get it. I may order the eBook edition...Ray

For tech books its dead trees over kindle every day.

Good info AK, thanks...Ray

Image stacking is only useful for smaller coins, and for imaging of things like details of varieties or errors.

As magnification increases, depth of field decreases, and effective aperture also decreases. This is a double-edged sword that eventually forces you to focus stack to achieve full-resolution images. I try to target an effective aperture of f10, f12 max, while my sensor DLA is f6.7. I always expect to downsize my images by 2x to achieve full sharpness due to the limitations of Bayer demosaicing algorithms. Thus the f12 max yield approximately f6 when downsized by 2x, and thus is within the DLA of the sensor.

My main collecting interest is Lincoln Cents, which require a magnification of around 0.7:1 on my Canon APS-C camera. This leaves a little room around the coin for cropping or just to make it so the coin doesn't go all the way to the edge of the sensor. At 0.7:1, to get effective aperture of f10, requires me to shoot at f5.6 (feff is f9.5). The depth of field at f5.6 is just barely sufficient that if I am careful, and critically-focus on the middle levels of the coin (I use Lincoln's neck), and the coin is very flat, that I can get the whole coin in acceptable focus with a single shot. Any higher magnification, or higher resolution sensor (like a T6 or 70D) would require focus stacking, even for Cents. Dimes are a little smaller, so the limit is even sooner. A Trime, or Gold Dollar, or similar coin from other countries, will require focus stacking. Note that I am talking about at least a 2x reduction in size here, so if you expect to have good sharpness and depth of field at 100% pixel resolution, you will need to focus stack on Cents, maybe as large as Quarters.

With my full frame camera I find I need to stack with even dollar sized coins. Its only with the MFT camera that I find that stacking is unnecessary.

Not always true. As others have posted it's necessary for high relief coins. It's also necessary for very, very shallow relief... I have a split after strike US 3c Silver (14mm coin). So a full sized image is already pushing the edge of the image sensor size.

A tiny bit of the full planchet remains (maybe 1/3 of the rim, perhaps .25mm wide with the rest essentially flat. However, careful examination reveals both fault lines in the metal and a ghost of the design. Neither revealed by any kind of single image no matter how carefully focused. But a deep stack (30 images IIRC at step size of 1 or 2) reveals all - and produces an image I've blown up to poster size.






PS: Post 2K

Back on topic: The Author noted that the Infiniprobe( actually wrote "infinity probe") was an excellent lens albeit expensive.

I had never heard of it... I did a google search found the companies web site and found expensive was an understatement The full TS 160 infiniprobe system( minus objectives costs over US$2000.00 add in the macro objective (1X-4X)plus the necessary compression lens and your almost at $3000.00. At that price they can't even tell you in the manual what the Aperture values are. I found this discussion:

http://www.photomacrography.net/for...=infiniprobe

All my subsequent reading has just strengthened my original impressions

Yeah, the InfiniProbe stuff is probably decent and convenient to use but image quality may not be good enough to warrant the high cost.

In the last few years building systems for folks, I purchase stands and other equipment on ebay. I often end up with extra stuff in the process. One of the common things to get is the Bausch & Lomb MonoZoom7. This is a system that has interchangeable objectives, with an infinity-corrected 7:1 zoom lens. It is super convenient to use, and gives a pretty decent image, generally better than you get with a StereoZoom but not as good as with a dedicated objective. I think the InifiProbe may be similar to the MZ7 in this regard, though in reality the MZ7 may be even more convenient to use. Difference is the InfiniProbe is fixed focal length, with a wide focus range, so you can get very close to achieve high magnification. This is very similar to a standard microscope system. The MZ7, being infinity-corrected, has a fixed working distance, and a zoom system for increasing magnification. This is great, for instance, for scanning whole coins, then zooming-in to variety details. But when zoomed-in, the quality is good but not great, similar to the InfiniProbe, but instead of costing $4000 you can get whole MZ7 systems for <$500.