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 Replies: 26 / Views: 4,416 |
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Valued Member
United States
321 Posts |
So I built this thing. Any suggestions for modification? The structure is 2 feet high with R20 daylight fluorescent bulbs on the track.   The coins are raised by a superman bucket and a pencil cup covered with either black or white denim. My favorite picture so far is this morgan that I've posted a few times already  . The only editing I did was cropping. It literally looked like this on my camera and the color is perfect on my computer screen.  My camera is a Sony DSCW-290  12 mega pixels is the best thing I can say about the camera but its proving to work out just fine I can't change aperture or shutter speed nor can I customize white balance and there is not even "Manual" mode. I got this camera last year before I started collecting so I've decided I'll just deal with what I have. So thanks for looking! Comments, questions, suggestions are welcome and encouraged! |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1080 Posts |
Very nice, thanks for sharing that info. So it looks like the camera is actually further away from the coin than the lights? So how much do you zoom in on your coin? With 12 megapixels, does the coin fill most of the screen, half the screen...?
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Moderator
 United States
23522 Posts |
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Comments, questions, suggestions are welcome and encouraged! Do nothing. Change nothing. You've got it nailed, it's that simple. All that's left is to experiment with other types of coins, to figure out lighting angles for them. The Morgan *might* benefit slightly from postprocessing - a little Sharpness and a little more contrast - but it's already as good as any Point-and-shoot coin image I've ever seen. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4541 Posts |
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Valued Member
 United States
321 Posts |
specksnyder, I have the camera positioned a little above the lights so that I can make the lights and camera the same angle-90 deg. I zoom in 2.7x for the shot then crop on the computer. The original looks like this-  Superdave, Ya that one is really confusing me because the focus is so much sharper on the editing program and even photobucket. But whenever I post them here, they blur a little bit.  . Including the one in this post. Edited by mattbrowning7
07/26/2010 1:51 pm
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Valued Member
United States
321 Posts |
Right click. view image. the "un-enlarged" version looks sharper. How do I change the picture size to that one?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2600 Posts |
Quote:
I have the camera positioned a little above the lights so that I can make the lights and camera the same angle-90 deg. Matt, what do you mean 90 degrees? I am not following. Thx, Jim |
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Valued Member
United States
321 Posts |
90 degrees as in- both the camera and the lights are positioned directly above the coin, does that help?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2600 Posts |
AAaaaa, 90 degrees to the face of the coin. Got it.
Thx, Jim
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1080 Posts |
pretty awesome. Thanks for the tips
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21786 Posts |
Simple and effective, yielding excellent results. Ta for posting your setup on this forum.
Nothing to do with coins, but I have taken some excellent photographs using moonlight only. I used an old Rollei 35 with a 2.8 Tessar lens in a tripod with lockable cable release, and ASA 125 film speed. I read that moonlight is 1/5000 as strong as sunlight, so I made some calculations on exposure to give the same brightness as sunlight. At the same time, I wanted a very long exposure, so that the shadows would soften with the movement of the moon in the sky. The equivalent exposure was calculated at f22 for 3 1/2 hours. I took the resultant photographs to a few knowledgeable photographic folks, but none of them could figure it out how I produced the pictures, until I told them!
Edited by sel_69l
07/29/2010 03:09 am
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Valued Member
United States
321 Posts |
Wow very cool I would like to see what that would do for a coin. sounds really interesting, thanks for sharing sel_691
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Valued Member
United States
487 Posts |
If any body can help me on this thread I would be very grateful, here is my issue. I shoot my coins in macro using a recently purchased Canon PowerShot SX110 IS with 9.0 mp and 10x optical zoom/4x digital zoom. I do not get close ups like what I see on this thread, any secrets!
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Valued Member
United States
211 Posts |
Matt - Super Awesome Photos. The set-up looks good. Looks easy to slide the lights around to get optimal lighting. Some coins will want a full wash with the light behind the camera, some will want the lights coming at an angle to emphasis a die clash or double strike.
Make the sure the Sony camera's macro is on (the flower). Play with the distance and the zoom. You should be able to fill the frame with the coin. And do what SuperDave says, sharpness and contrast in editing program.
The bucket is a true photo-bucket!
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Valued Member
United States
211 Posts |
Rastatodd - The Canon SX110 is a great camera. Put it in Macro mode. Fool with the distance of the coin to the camera and the zoom. Get lots of light on the subject. The more light the more the camera has to stop-down.
"But Capn, what is "stop-down"?
It means the aperture on the camera has to close a bit. When the aperture closes you get sharper focus - it why photographers use flashes and flood light even for outdoor shots. They only shoot with a fully open aperture to get certain effects.
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Valued Member
United States
397 Posts |
Great photos. I have to say though - I love the cat examining the setup in the first shot. Makes me want to caption it and send it in to a lolcat site.
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Replies: 26 / Views: 4,416 |
Posted 07/26/2010 11:04 am
