| Author |
 Replies: 9 / Views: 2,483 |
|
|
Valued Member
United States
441 Posts |
I was able to get my hands on the subject lens in pristine condition for a very good deal on ebay.
I'm not experienced with prime lenses, so I want to get some feedback from the pros here on using this lens to it's best capabilities. I want to use this lens not only for coins, but for regular shooting. Right now, the only body I have is an EOS 1000D.
I had a junk Roos dime that I pictured below using this lens today. I manually focused using Live View, aperture priority, set at F/8, cam/lens mounted on the <$400 stand, (3) diffused Jansjo's, then cropped and resized to fit here. Not much more processing than that.
Pic seems a bit blurred to me, but I can't seem to get it any better. Am I looking for more out of this lens than I should? Also, IMHO, this pic doesn't show near the detail that I get with a Rodagon or a Componon-S enlarger lens. Do you think that a newer Canon body would help to maximize the capabilities of this lens? Thoughts?  I'm at a bit of a loss as to what settings to use to get a better, sharper coin pic, but I've already found out that I'll need more distance to get nickel, quarter, and dollar shots. I'm working on that.....
Currently, I'm working on cataloging my cents, with dimes coming next. My ultimate goal is to pic/catalog my entire collection for insurance purposes and just for the sake of being more organized to know what I have.
Any feedback or info is greatly appreciated.
|
|
|
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
2403 Posts |
Great looking image!!  I just might have to get me one of these lenses. |
|
Forum Dad
 United States
24173 Posts |
|
|
Valued Member
 United States
441 Posts |
Bobby....really nice shots! Settings?
|
|
Forum Dad
United States
24173 Posts |
Full auto burst shooting. Easy peasy.
|
|
Pillar of the Community
 United States
4593 Posts |
Yes, I love mine too, mostly my macro lens on the copystand.
-----Burton 50+ year / Life / Emeritus ANA member (joined 12/1/1973) Life member: Numismatics International, CONECA Member: TNA, FtWCC, NETCC, EveryCountry (online) coin club Owned by three cats and a wife of 40+ years (joined 1983) Author: 3rd Edition of the Sample Slabs book, https://www.sampleslabs.info/ |
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
4038 Posts |
Nice image Andy! The Canon macro is a great coin lens, but of course lighting is more important then the equipment used, and your lighting is good. I don't see anything wrong with sharpness on the image. Most likely you'd just need to do a bit of post processing to improve the shot further. It is good "raw material":
1) Properly composed
2) In focus
3) Balanced exposure without significant blown highlights or lost shadows
4) Good color balance
What was your downsizing ratio?
The last item is a bit tough to judge, but it does look natural.
Contact me for photographic equipment or visit my home page at: http://macrocoins.com |
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
9395 Posts |
I recently tested this lens at 0.67x (marked 1:1.5 on the lens barrel), using a small USAF test chart. Directly attached to the camera, it could resolve down to a line separation of 3 pixels at all aperture from 2.8 to 8. This is as good as the sensor allows, with debayering and the anti-alias filter.
This lens has no aperture ring, so I can't test it as usual with 4x or 10x microscope objectives to closely examine the areal image, but I could enlarge the image using a 2x Canon EF teleconverter and still retain aperture control. This shows that the lens can resolve at least 50% better than the sensor, at f/4, which seems to be the best aperture at 0.67x.
It looks like this lens is capable of producing sharp images at 0.67x. I don't know what magnification it's optimized for.
|
|
Valued Member
United States
441 Posts |
rmpsrpms asked: What was your downsizing ratio?
Ray,
I took the pic in RAW with a max resolution of 3888x2592 for the 1000D. I then circle cropped the coin in DPP and save/converted to JPG.
In Paintshop X8, I cropped the image to 2425 x 2425, resized at 40% to keep it under 300k for posting here. Final resolution of what's pictured is 1212 x 1212.
Not sure what you mean by "ratio" vs. how I did it. Please explain and thanks for the feedback.
|
|
Pillar of the Community
United States
4038 Posts |
Your sharpness is pretty good, but might be improved if you ensure you downsize by integers. Your final image is 1212, so your ratio was 1212/2425=0.4997938. If instead of cropping to 2425x2425, you crop to 2424x2424, then downsize the 1212x1212 (exactly 1:2 ratio) your final image will be sharper.
|
| |
Replies: 9 / Views: 2,483 |
|
Posted 08/10/2016 6:52 pm
