1941-S toner

[jcuve]

Took Ray's advice and purchased some used enlarging lenses. Some technical issues to the side, I am rather close to getting my lighting issues ironed out. The lens is a El Nikkor 105mm - vintage on a Canon 60D. I had to find a M39 ring to a EOS mount adapter on eBay. The obverse has a slight blowout of the highlights near the eye, something I need to eliminate. The images are about as clear as I can make them. Coin is courtesy Chris Welch.

Here is one experiment with a 1941-S wheat toner.

I am shooting a bunch of these - so I will be adding them periodically - if not your thing, just ignore them as the images will be big.

[Maineman750]

Very nice Jason ! And that is the perfect size so that we don't need to scroll in order to see the menu

[kloccwork419]

oops.. I ready the subject too fast..I thought I was elsewhere...lolol

[liveandievarieties]

If I hadn't read your post, I'd have thought it was by Ray! Nicely done Jason.

[Antiquity]

Very nice Jason, one of these days I am hoping to get into coin photography.

[jcuve]

I like toners - I don't collect them, but they make interesting photo subjects. Thanks for the comments.

[hasfam]

All around great. Thanks for posting it.

[ray_parkhurst]

Looks good Jason. The 105EL is sharpest at f8. What was your aperture setting for this shot? I would not recommend stopping down farther than f8. Is the Cent taking up the full frame, or did you crop it out of the frame? And did you shoot the 60D in Live View mode? I find the 105EL a bit sharper than any of the Nikon 105 Micros, and it has a longer working distance than the newer ones that shorten focal length for higher magnifications. It's also a LOT smaller diameter so you can get your lights up really high. I look forward to more pictures...

[jcuve]

1941-p

Thanks Ray. I did take it at f8. The working distance is huge - the lens smaller - and I have a lot more room to play around with. The coin was not, but nearly, 100% of the frame. And I am using live mode. My copy-stand is old, so my ability to focus is not perfect but I am getting better at manually making millimeter increments.

Here is a 1941 (coin courtesy Chris Welch again)

[Scott99]

Very nice, Those are some nice images.

[Tucker2000]

Those pictures are just the right size, for me at least. They are great. Thanks Jason.
Johnny

[ray_parkhurst]

Very nice!

It looks like you may not have the coin completely flat vs the sensor. The background tan surface is blurrier on the left side than on the right in both shots. There is a simple trick to fix this...

Put a mirror on the surface the coin is on. Then adjust your aperture to smallest (f32 or f45) and look through the viewfinder and you should see your camera lens looking back at you! Nudge the mount around until you are looking straight into the lens at center of image and your system will be flat to the coin. This will allow you to open the aperture wider than you could with the coin tilted and still keep in focus.

Once you do this you might try opening the aperture a bit. The 105EL doesn't suffer much in sharpness going to f5.6, but the corner sharpness starts to roll off. This is not such a big deal for full coin shots since they don't extend to the corners. I'd suggest starting at f5.6, then about halfway to f8, then f8 and check the differences. The click-stops are there for reference and repeatability, but it's pretty easy to go "halfway" between them.

Reason for opening the aperture is that for Cents the magnification is around 0.8 full-sensor. The "f8" aperture setting is the "infinity" aperture. For macro work, the "effective aperture" is smaller by fe = fi * (M+1) so for f8 and M=0.8 you are working at an effective aperture of about f14. This is not too bad, but it is diffraction-limited on your camera. Your 60D has 4.3um sensor pixels, same as my T2i, and has a DLA (Diffraction Limited Aperture) of about f6.8. So at f14 you are well beyond the DLA, so it's possible to get a sharper image at a wider aperture. Even if you go to f5.6, this will still be around f11 and thus diffraction limited but will be sharper. Combined with the flattening of the coin you should still have adequate depth of field to get an excellent shot.

[ray_parkhurst]

Jason...if you want to see the difference aperture makes with your 60D, check out this website:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=674&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=0&API=4&LensComp=674&CameraComp=453&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=6

You can compare cameras, lenses, apertures, etc with their comparison tool. Try your 60D with a 100mm LIS Macro lens, and compare f8, f11, and f16. The comparison is not at magnification, so you need to compensate. f8 is on the edge of DLA for the camera, so is about as good as you can get. f11 is where you can get at f5.6 with your lens, and f16 is a little worse than where you are at f8.

[jcuve]

1941-d

I'll try the mirror adjustment, you're right the surface is not parallel with the sensor. A good suggestion, thanks. I edited the last of the '41s...

1941-D (coin courtesy Chris Welch)