Cheap way to photograph coins

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 6:51 am

A friend of mine has inherited a coin collection and would like to photograph them so that the coins 'fill the picture' - but he does not want real micro shots of bits of the coins.

He does not have much in the way of photo equipment at the moment.

He is looking at these USB microscope cameras and asked me about these, but tbh I know very little about them. I suspect for this task they would be okay, but would like to get some idea from you guys if any of you have tried these cheaper USB devices (say <$100).

Any pointers to decent devices, any to avoid, avoid all of them?

At the end of the day he does not need ultimate quality, he is merely trying to identify these coins, and he does not want to spend much money, so a system requiring a whole new camera and a whole new microscope (even if both reasonably cheap) is probably too much.

g4lab · Post by **g4lab** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 7:24 am

http://www.thelittlecameras.com/

The jeweler owner of this site will sell him everything he needs reasonably priced and give him great support.

soldevilla · Post by **soldevilla** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 11:41 am

The classic way to take pictures of coins is to illuminate them with a inclined 45° glass. Any digital compact camera now has sufficient macro facilities to photograph coins without any additional cost besides the glass cleaner

I have found this sketch on internet. Obviously the vertical wall must to be black to prevent reflections

ray_parkhurst · Post by **ray_parkhurst** » Sun Jul 29, 2012 12:58 pm

soldevilla wrote:... Any digital compact camera now has sufficient macro facilities to photograph coins...

I had to cringe when I read this, but then realized all is relative. This statement is similar to "any modern microscope has sufficient facilities to photograph insects". It all depends on how high a quality you're trying to achieve. If the goal is to document the coins for insurance purposes, then the statement has some truth, and this may be what the OP has in mind. If the idea is to take pictures of the coins in order to get top dollar for them in an auction listing, then it's not likely that ANY compact camera is fully suitable. Generally in an auction situation, the better the picture quality, the higher the final price. If the coins are fairly valuable, it may pay to invest in a top grade setup and learn how to use it. That setup may pay for itself many times over in prices realized.

lauriek, what is the purpose of photographing the coins?

mgoodm3 · Post by **mgoodm3** » Sun Jul 29, 2012 1:43 pm

Ray summed up things pretty well. I would tend to rank the cameras:

barely OK - USB microscope (OK for close-ups of coin parts, not so good for a whole coin)
adequate - compact camera
best - SLR with macro lens

I wrote an article on basic coin photography a few years back (I also have written a book on the subject but that is beyond the scope of this forum).

http://coinimaging.com/photography.html

CaptainFwiffo · Post by **CaptainFwiffo** » Sun Jul 29, 2012 11:52 pm

The hard part, of course, is the lighting. It's actually possible to get sorta-OK photos with no budget at all. I took this with with a $3 Chinese 10x loupe taped in front of the lens of my cameraphone (the notably mediocre camera of the OG Droid) and some clever modifications to a desk lamp:

OK, it's not gonna set the world on fire, or get the maximum bids for a high-value coin, but it's better than half the coin pictures on eBay. It's also sufficient to identify and grade the coin. I think you can probably do a fair bit better with a point and shoot with a decent macro function.

I've got a grown-up camera now, and I'm not going back, but I got away with that technique for a while.