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 Replies: 18 / Views: 3,257 |
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New Member
Netherlands
8 Posts |
Dear Coin Community, Hope you are having a spledid day. I would love to photograph my entire collection so I got the Canon EOS 60D with a 100mm macro lens. The camera and lens are great but I am too inexperienced to use it propperly. I have done some reading and it turns out I need to focus stack (or bracking?) to get the background and foreground in good focus. I will include some examples of the problem I am currently facing. As you can see from the attachments the focus is not great. I have dabbled in photoshop and did manage to get the pictures to stack however the quality of the photo seems to suffer. I have also looked around in the camera settings to enable the focus stacking feature but have been unable to find what I'm looking for. Perhaps some of you can shine your knowledge upon my problem? Thanks for reading.     |
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Moderator
 United States
56855 Posts |
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Moderator
United States
164408 Posts |
 to the Community!
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
8774 Posts |
Do you have the software that comes with the Canon?
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New Member
 Netherlands
8 Posts |
Quote:
Do you have the software that comes with the Canon? Hi! Yes I do, I have EOS Utility and for the attached examples I used the left and right arrows to focus my image.  as you can see I cant have the background and the foregound of the coin in focus at the same time.
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New Member
Netherlands
8 Posts |
So these are the settings I am using in live view:  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3935 Posts |
Hi @Avalanche, and welcome to the forum!
The problem you are having is due to your aperture setting. F2.8 is way too wide and you should try stopping-down to at least f8, possibly f11 in order to get sufficient depth of field for you ancient coins.
Now, if you do want to focus stack, it will give you a slightly better result, but is a lot of work to do if you can get away with stopping-down the lens with acceptable results, so try that first.
Contact me for photographic equipment or visit my home page at: http://macrocoins.com |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3935 Posts |
There are other settings that should be changed as well, but let's first deal with the focus problem.
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New Member
Netherlands
8 Posts |
-The problem you are having is due to your aperture setting. F2.8 is way too wide and you should try stopping-down to at least f8, possibly f11 in order to get sufficient depth of field for you ancient coins. Dear rmpsrpms, Thank you for your reply, I'm pulling my hair out since I can't get this to work. I have done as you said and I will include some examples. I am not yet satisfied with the results, I have tried different apertures, since I am a newbie I am open to all suggestions. I am trying different settings. The distance from my camera should be sufficient, I have tried putting it further away but unfortunately, same results. These are the pictures I just made with adjusted apertures both with focussed back- and foreground:       |
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Moderator
United States
56855 Posts |
I do not think the ISO is correct either. rmpsrpms is one member that knows his stuff about camera settings. John1  |
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New Member
Netherlands
8 Posts |
Hi John! I'm really happy people are trying to help, I was about to call in a professional hahaha. i changed the ISO as you mentioned and I did seem to get a little better result. Any ideas how I could improve on this? It seems that if I change the ISO to a higher number the end result suffers in sharpness. here is an example:  Edited by Avalanche
08/08/2021 2:05 pm
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Moderator
United States
56855 Posts |
http://goccf.com/t/121214I found this by typing ISO settings in the search box upper left of page. Type in key words for a lot of info. John1
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5339 Posts |
The ISO will not affect your depth of field. I would keep the ISO 400 or less to insure adequate resolution.
Since you're using a fixed focal length 100mm lens, there are only 2 things you can do (besides focus stacking) to improve your depth of field. One is narrowing the aperture as @rmpsrmps suggested, and the other is to increase the distance from the lens to the coin. I would try an aperture setting of f/16, and move your lens further from the coin, even if you have to crop the final image a bit. If you still can't get everything in focus with your high relief coins, you may have to try focus stacking, which will be a lot more effort.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5339 Posts |
Also, try manually focusing on something in the middle of your desired depth of field range, like the nose, instead of either the high point of the portrait or the field.
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Valued Member
United States
71 Posts |
Is the camera hand held or placed on a stand? If hand held, it takes a lot of practice/patience to get the focus right.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3935 Posts |
Good advice from all the folks here! Focusing on a middle feature is critical for getting good overall focus when stopping-down.
The ISO issue is strange, but may point to a vibration issue. It looks like you're using Live View for your shots so shutter shake and mirror slap should not be causing a problem. When you look at the coin in zoom view, is it stable with no vibration?
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Replies: 18 / Views: 3,257 |
Posted 08/06/2021 11:11 am
