New Adams dollar pics (grade my coin and the pic)

[Keleum]

Mornin' Everyone.

 

Well I wanted to try my hand at taking pics of coins, and see what you folks thought of this coin. I've been experimenting with my canon A510.

 

 

 

Are these pics enough to estimate a grade? Any suggestions? My lighting is a LED flashlight, no flash and macro-focus. With and without the recessed lights on.

[MBA101]

Pics look like they focus on the center and get blurry toward the edge.

 

I would call this one an AU-58

[Keleum]

I seem to have that problem, these were the best of the bunch. Is that the auto-focus, or am I just too close?

[Ted K-migration]

In my experience it's likely somewhat to do with angle. Especially when you have something in macro mode, depth of field becomes an issue and if you're off even by a little parts will be out of focus. The best solution is obviously going to be a tripod made to shoot straight down, but those are generally out of the price range of most folks. It looks like the body of the camera is different sized on each side, if you can find a couple of blocks or boxes or something to balance it on so that you're squared with the coin, it might help out a bit.

[Keleum]

thanks, I'll try that next.

[pendragon1998]

Yours looks like it has a bunch of chatter in the field on the obverse, as well as some fairly nasty nicks on Adams. It's hard to see under the lint Next time, try hitting it with some canned air! Your obverse image is too dark to tell much. My guess from your pics is MS62 +/- 1 Don't worry - with time and practice, your images will come out cleaner!

 

These Adams coins have all been looking fairly beaten up. Here's the best I could find out the 50 coins in two rolls:

[bsshog40]

I see a couple things here also. First, to capture the light , you are shooting at an angle. You will get better results being able to shoot straight on using 2 lights on each side of the coin. As for straight on shooting, you can get a 1 foot tripod that sits on the table and will give you a better front shot. These are pretty cheap. I also came up with a type of telescopic camera mount that I presently use. They sell those lights that have a plain bulb with the magnifying lens in the middle. These are on an extension arm. It's basically a work light. I actually removed the light, took an old tripod and removed the camera mount from this and mounted it to the work light extension arm. This gives me the ability to aim the camera straight down with no tripod legs blocking my lights. This is the pic of the light I bought, I think $20.00 I have a small hole drilled in the back of my PC desk and I just swing it out and screw my camera to it and it's ready to go.

[pendragon1998]

My coin photography setup

[bsshog40]

I've seen your set-up Michael and it seems to work great. I guess most set-ups would depend on camera type. I use the stock lens on my Canon S3IS. It has a super-macro mode that enables me to sit right on the coin and still focus. It focuses to 0cm. This is why I require somethig that enables me to lower my camera all the way down to my table.

[MunkyMan95]

Coin: MS62

Picture: XF45