Fun with "SuperMacro" setting: 1964 Kennedy half-dollar (CAUTION: dialuppers)

[James_OldeTowne]

Absolutely no post-shot adjustments, other than cropping into a square. The first two are thumbnails at 400x400, reduced from the 1712x1712 originals. I was a bit more careful with light placement this time, was taken with just a single 40-watt incandescent bulb.

 

The camera was less than an inch away from the coin. The images are a bit out of focus at the bottom because apparently, I didn't have the coins exactly parallel with the camera lens.

 

Incidentally, this is not at the highest resolution setting for the camera. It's capable of capturing an image nearly twice this size.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dcoin]

When graders look through their microscopes do they see something similar to the image above? If so, I guess they would have train their eyes to not overreact at HUGE contact marks that in reality are not that big.

[TomB]

When graders look through their microscopes do they see something similar to the image above? If so, I guess they would have train their eyes to not overreact at HUGE contact marks that in reality are not that big.

TPG-employed graders don't look through microscopes to grade coins and generally do not use any magnification unless there are variety attribution requests or questions as to authenticity.

[CHABSENTIA]

Is that true? Sombody told me that you needed 20X magnification to be able to tell for sure if a coin had been cleaned.

[ant]

if they look through a microscope they would see things that would drop grade that normaly wouldnt be seen with normal eye. think how you see a coin just viewing, then think what you see with a 10x mag. grading wouldnt be fair.

 

now i dont know about stuff like fsb or fb or fbl or fs. do they use any mag on these or do they need to be seen with naked eye? you would have to have great eyes to see them i think.

[MikeInFL]

James, Those photos are pretty good. Thanks for sharing.

 

FWIW and some constructive criticism: You have, however, started to push up against one of the shortcomings of "short" lenses

-- you have to get very close to the coin to take large photos of it. This limits your ability to place the lights "high" (i.e. close to

perpendicluar to the coin's plane) which is the best place for them. As a result you will be challenged to keep the lighting even

and will have difficulty not having "hot spots" in the resulting photos and keeping the rest of the coin properly exposed.

Incidentally, this is the exact reason the photos above are overexposed (i.e. have blown highlights -- look at the left edge

of JFK's forehead and see the solid white area [RGB value of 255,255,255], that's a blown highlight). A bit longer lens would

help solve this problem (and is why I use a 200mm), but for most uses the shorter lens will work just fine.

 

Respectfully submitted hoping this might help...Mike

 

p.s. here's a really, really large photo from my new camera, 2850 pixels square: http://www.pbase.com/miker/image/90972980