"Final" Numismatic Photography Setup

[hasfam]

Excellent setup and photos. I took your advise from your earlier post and purchased 2 of the Jansjo LED's. I haven't got the filtering or distance quite right yet but there was an immediate improvement from what I had. Thanks

[Amadauss]

The trick is to diffuse the light as you are doing. Nice job.

[foundinrolls]

Absolutely Phenomenal Images! I need say nothing else:-)

[ray_parkhurst]

Thanks to all for the kind words!

Nice setup Ray, and nice coins. What kind of closeups can you get with that? Thanks for sharing.

Jody

With the 75mm lens I can get to about 2:1 magnification, filling the frame with about half a Cent. If I change over to a 35mm lens, I can get up to 5:1 and fill the frame with just the date and mintmark. Great for variety shots.

By the way. You're shooting "raw". How much time does it take to produce one of these pictures?

I'm using ViewNX2 for capturing and raw processing. I'm not very sophisticated at post processing. It takes me about a minute to set levels and such, and then another minute to convert to jpg for the web. Cropping takes another minute or two, so from time I shoot the coin til I have an 800x800 image for the web it's about 5 minutes or so. Not fast, but the work needs to be done whether RAW or jpg and the RAW processing is only a bit slower than jpg.

Now if I was having to focus stack, it's a whole different story, so high mag photos take much, much longer to process. At f5.6 for M=0.8 on these cents, DOF is enough without too much compromise in sharpness that I can get by with a single image.

Your set up reminds me of a dentist chair for coins!

However, the end result is AMAZING!

Lara

Maybe I should have been a dentist instead of an engineer? Uh...maybe not. Thanks Lara!

[Antiquity]

how much do you want for the setup? Instruction manual required.

Nice, very nice.

[Maineman750]

how much do you want for the setup? Instruction manual required.

Nice, very nice.

Good question though. Ray, how much could one expect to shell out to get quality pics like this ?

[ray_parkhurst]

Assuming you already have a DSLR, then the stand, bellows and lens can cost anywhere from $250 to $700 or so depending on quality level. But keep in mind that with a bellows setup, you don't need to get the most expensive lens out there. The bellows allows you to decouple the camera from the lens, and gives you a wide range of choices, NONE of which are the more traditional "dedicated macro" lenses. I've found that most enlarger lenses are superior to most dedicated macros, so I've concentrated on putting together setups using enlarger lenses.

For compact setups like I use, the range of 75-105mm seems to work best for the lens. I did a "shootout" of a bunch of lenses in this range and published the results over on CC forum. Here's the link:

http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/t...TOPIC_ID=98494

For the bellows, it's best to use a "universal" type so you can adapt it to your camera on one side and lens on the other. You can go with a dedicated bellows for your camera but most of the reasonably-priced bellows out there are quite old, before digital, so have archaic mounts, so you'll have to adapt anyway. Why not start with an easily-adapted T-mount or M42?

Rather than going on and on, go ahead and ask questions...Ray

[Chugly]

Your photo's are simply outstanding Ray! Thanks for taking the time to show us how its done. Being able to take good photo's is so critical in this hobby!

[ray_parkhurst]

Very nice setup. If I had money to buy a nice camera, I would do the same thing as you

By the way, love the toners you got there.

Thanks...This one is transfixing my gaze...here's #3:

[Amadauss]

Not trying to drag this thread on Ray, but these pics are so beautiful. You might want to explain with the bellows and decoupling the camera from the lens for all because in your setup you do not show a camera at the top. Or am I missing something? Thanks.