Another Crown

[NoHope587]

2003 $1 Commemorative

Another from the QE2 collection

Obverse Designer: Ian Rank Broadley

Reverse Designer: Travis Farley

Alloy: 0.999 Silver

Diameter: 40.60mm

Weight 31.15gms

Quality: Proof

Issue Limit: 50,000

[Triggersmob]

Stop it! Stop it! I can't take it any more. 

[Paint Your Wagon]

Now I can understand why THIS is called a crown

I am trying to get proficient in photoshop so I have a question
your original is 739 by 743 pixels which for a large coin like this should be perfect even at 96 dpi
; how come the red of the crown has white spots ? Is there really a texture on the coin or
was your dpi setting too low ? or did you blow up a small pic ?

Are you using one lightsource and a camera ? Cause I am jealous the quality of the lighting is superb 

[NoHope587]

The picture is reduced from the original resolution by 50%
The Camera has to take the credit for the pictures not me as its on full auto.
It is a Sony DSC-F828 it was a very short lived model Sony brought out just before they went to DSLR format.
I have owned the F series since the F202 and have found the Carl Zeiss lens to be great for macro shots.
The white dots are actually on the Crown.
For lighting.
I have an overhead regular 60Wat lightbulb with a white diffusing globe around it.
I have a 12 in Fluorescent bulb again diffused about 24" above the desk offset about 30degrees from the vertical.
Finally I have a 40w desk lamp with a GE daylight bulb that I move around to get the best lighting.
The white balance is set at the beginning of each session.
I have the camera on a small tripod. I set the delay timer for 15seconds and the holographic auto focus system does the rest.
I then bring the images into Microsoft photo editor crop and resize to 50%.
Its easy and for the most part I am happy with the results.
Every now and again I get the urge to go out and By a DSLR with a Macro lens but so far I have resisted.

[Paint Your Wagon]

Thank you for the detailed answer
Up to now I had an analogue throught the lens 35 year old total manual camera I could make sing my song on 35 mm kodak film

Now I got a Canon 30 D DSLR with equivalent zoom from 50 to 100 mm
First the white balance as reported is very mediocre ( white is not white on gold or silver coins )
Second I do not know what all the special functions like macro etc do because with a 1.5 kilo beast like this you just point and shoot
I put it on autoshoot series of 8 pictures autofocus auto everything and maximum sized jpegs and shooting my dogs in motion is no problem
It shoots 8 perfect pictures in like 1.5 seconds ( then the buffer is full at max size jpegs)
whatsoever this is an action camera you can take to autocar races .

For coins I bought fullspectrum daylight lamps with a known Kelvin temperature which I can input into the camera and I can shoot raw which means the color pixels are only manipulated into a photo in photoshop itself ; but up to now I have not had the courage for a third shoot
The first two coinshoots were mediocre not having the right lighting and my scanner is so much easier to use .

So if I can find the courage and if I can keep the dogs off my working space ( my favourite sleeps on my desk) I will try another photoshoot but seeing your pictures I would say Do NOT spend 1500 $ on a DSLR and then probably another 600$ on a 100 mm lense because your pictures are as close to perfect as you can get

Thank you again
August