Well... here goes...

Greetings Collectors,

Roughly 7 months ago (actually Oct.17th) I posted a journal titled "I want to buy your help". I had been a CS member for almost 2 years (would have been 2 years that next month in Nov) and I had yet to post a pic with a journal. At the time I had some really crappy pics of my silver eagle collection (they still remain to this day as my thoughts are, once you have seen one MS-69 SE, you've seen them all) but my daughter had pretty much done them and what little I learned during that short period of photography was quickly forgotten. Bottom line, I asked for help and many of you rose to the occasion and offered many tips and advice which I will say I tried each and every thing all of you suggested. There was one who went way beyond the "call of duty" and that was who I describe as a dear friend from Hawaii. His name is Brandon. His "handle" here is RBG. Once I had mastered the art of taking the photo, it was Brandon who, over the phone, & via email walked me through the process of the editing & re-sizing of my pics. If it were not for Brandon, I would not have been able to do what I have done in what was a pretty short period AND I would not be able to do what I am doing now. Thanks again Brandon and I dedicate this study to you and the patience you showed to a real "dummy" at the time I started. I am not a pro but I have learned much and of that, I want to pass that along to those of you that are interested.

This first post will be a short study on getting "set up" to start taking your shots. The picture you see here is my fancy coin photography studio. I had many of you share how you took your shots and I tried every single one of them. I took pics with flash, without flash, I took photos inside and outside at all times of day. I did cloudy, sunny and all points around those conditions. I took pics in my breakfast room with sunlight coming in through the large picture window (get it? picture window?) and I even got on my roof and took shots up there. I studied my camera manual, spent untold hours on line studying all kinds of ways to take pictures. What I ended up with after many dozens of hours and many thousands of shots was the following:

(1) I use an end table pictured with two small table lamps set approx. 22 inches apart. The lamps have 60W "new fangled" curly flouresent bulbs (energy savers). It's also handy if you are taking more than a couple of shots, have a little note pad and pen to number the order your pics are taken. (ie coin 1 1943 Walker pics # 1 & 2 (obverse&reverse)

(2) I have books (3 pictured) 1 1/2 inches thick stacked on top of one another, then the positioning of my tri-pod mounted 8.1 mega pixels Sanyo VPC-E870. It has, for what it's worth, a 2.5 inch LCD monitor and a 3X super zoom lens. Although I tried every combination of light and shutter speed and all other different combo's of every setting on this camera (and there are a bunch of different settings), I will say that now what works best is the "default" settings that the camera is already set with. The "ONLY" thing that has proved important, and I can't tell you how very important this is, is that you will get the very best results with the camera set on "MACRO". Believe me, let everything else alone, set the camera on macro, & leave the other zillion settings just as they come on the camera (default settings) and you are all set.

(3) When the camera is mounted on the tripod, the camera is 5-7 inches away from the slab/coin. At this distance the slab almost fills the entire screen. I can't tell you how much time I wasted trying to get too close to the coin physically or by zooming in. This you "do not" need to do. If you try to get too close to your coin, you will see that there is a major "focus" problem. This one issue perplexed me more than any other. When you do your cropping later that coin is going to get very close & very large and show all the detail you will ever need.

(4) On top of the books or whatever you use as a "platform" for your coin/coins place a white sheet of paper. On the books you see in the picture here I have standard printer paper folded once in half. After many uses it will get smudged and dirty and with the detail you will find you are getting, keep that white background (paper) clean. The dirt will really show up in the pics if it's not cropped out (change the white paper as often as needed). Raw coins tend to dirty it up rather quickly. Also I have a cat. You would not believe how ugly a cat hair sitting atop the obverse of a "slabbed" gold coin is 'til you've seen it. It's things like this that has cost me more wasted time as in having to re-shoot that gold coin obverse all on account of a dam very "detailed" cat hair. If you have multiple coins to shoot, you will have to take a book or two away and/or raise your tripod. To shoot a larger area as in multiple coins your table lamp shades will need to be removed and possibly higher wattage bulbs to get the desired effect. Otherwise you will see the glare of the lamp-shades. (to see this glare, look at my post of a little while back of my 4-coin 2008-W gold eagle set. The post was "A gorgeous site to behold". You will see the result of having your lamps too close to the coins being shot. The distance you see in my post here is the right distance for a single coin/slab shot. Add numerous coins, as in 3-4 slabs, remove the shades and/or spread your lamps and/or raise your tripod. You will find that if you can fill your screen with the subject matter (coin) you are at just the right distance. Pretend that your camera does not have a "zoom".

(5) Always have your camera battery fully charged before taking a multitude of shots. I can't tell you how many times I have had to stop "mid-stream", just when I was on a roll because my battery died.

(6) The bulbs are at a roughly 60 degree angle and very slightly behind the coin, still at that 20-24 inches apart. Believe me I have tried all kinds of light and at all kinds of positions and what you see here is what I have found to work best for me. If you want, I would like to encourage you to play with each step of the process as in this "set up" and in the next few phases of posts I plan to do.

Also all of the instructions and tips I plan to share are all based on working with the free download from Irfanview. Those of you that haven't yet, go to Irfanview.com and download their "FREE" program and you will have that out of the way. Those of you that use other editing software like Adobe or Picasa, you really owe it to yourself to try the Irfanview. I swear by it. It's great stuff, it's user friendly, & it's free. If you prefer yours over it, well so be it. Whatever works best for you.

(7) Once you have taken a few shots you will need to get them onto your PC to get ready for the editing process. Ever how you can do this, just remember you need to have them where you know how to get to them, to be able to crop and re-size them. For those of you that are fairly "computer savy" this is a "no-brainer" but for a dummy like myself, much different. Very early in this whole learning process I took a bunch of pics, downloaded them to my PC and then couldn't find them. Go figure... Luckily I have that part down pat now.

Anyway thats about it for now. The next post will have to do with the editing & cropping on Irfanview. As I took pictur