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I am looking to buy a digital camera to post some pics of my finds. can anyone who has done this tell me what zoom and megapixels I should have to get some nice close-ups?? I dont want to spend too much, as taking penny pictures is about all I will do with it. My amazon giftcard account is getting pretty big via dumping zincs through coinstar, so a camera is my next purchase, TY for any help.

My suggestion would be a flat bed scanner. I've never had much luck with the camera.

This is one I scanned this week:

Neat coin!

Verbane wrote:My suggestion would be a flat bed scanner. I've never had much luck with the camera.

This is one I scanned this week:

+1

My personal preference is a camera. It gives you better color rendition and better contrast.



In answer to your question. Any mid grade or better camera properly adjusted and with a macro setting will give you good results. Good lighting makes more of a difference than everything else put together. My personal preferences are Nikon or Canon.

I use a Nikon CoolPix and on the micro aka close up mode it does excellent. These cameras do a great job and are pretty affordable being only $100 or so. Also once you have taken the pictures place them on your computer and open the picture with a photo edit software like office picture manager. Resize the picture to 300 x 300 to make it fit on the forum.

Sony Cyber-shot.......DSC-T99.......(optical steady shot) 14.1 mega pixels.

Nice macro for your coins......






Then it's great for regular pics.

WOW... Nice camera, like the filled 9 and the bass boat...

DebtFreeMe wrote:WOW... Nice camera, like the filled 9 and the bass boat...

Did you see the letters in "LIBERTY"? or the die crack/lamination in Abe's skull?

Bassboat....all I see is a fancy storage system....it's an over/under style. (working on that)

You don't need a really fancy camera, but a good budget setup is at least a 10 megapixel with a macro setting and a time delay feature, a steady tripod, and a couple daylight spectrum CFL lights. If you're happy with that, stick with it...or you can keep going and easily spend $10K on a nice DSL, lens, professional lights, and diffusers.

One tip though...if you can find a budget camera with a nice big lens, I'd choose that one over the standard pinhole cameras. A nice lens really does make a difference.

TheJonasCollegeFund wrote:Sony Cyber-shot.......DSC-T99.......(optical steady shot) 14.1 mega pixels.

Nice macro for your coins......






Then it's great for regular pics.

WOW!!!

I'm going to your bank if you get boats in your coin boxes!! One question, how big was the box that beauty came in?

Must have been quite the coin counter to allow a beauty of a boat like that to slip through back into circulation!

thanks guys, so Im getting the megapixels and macro are more important than zoom for closeups?(sorry I am camera illiterate) thanks again, and Ill start looking at amazon!

penny pretty wrote:thanks guys, so Im getting the megapixels and macro are more important than zoom for closeups?(sorry I am camera illiterate) thanks again, and Ill start looking at amazon!

A good macro setting takes the place of the zoom fuction. I think a minimum of 10 mega-pixels is a good place to start.

penny pretty wrote:thanks guys, so Im getting the megapixels and macro are more important than zoom for closeups?(sorry I am camera illiterate) thanks again, and Ill start looking at amazon!

Zoom is for far away. Macro is for closeups.

If you feel like you need to zoom, your camera is too far away. Ideally, you should be able to shoot your pictures from 2-3" away, where the coin will fill the screen. More megapixels will let you zoom in on your computer screen to see fine details.

From my old 5-megapixel Sony CyberShot, cropped with Paint.net (free), and reduced by 50% with Irfanview (also free).

TY engineer, macro for closeups. guess thats what I was trying to find out, but didnt know how to ask. thanks tinhorn for the sample also. thats about all I would need.

Shifty51 wrote:...once you have taken the pictures place them on your computer and open the picture with a photo edit software like office picture manager. Resize the picture to 300 x 300 to make it fit on the forum.

I like the PowerToy for image resizing. Just install it and then you can right-click on the file and resize without even opening it. You can either create a copy of the desired size or size down the original. http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/

Madwest wrote:

Shifty51 wrote:...once you have taken the pictures place them on your computer and open the picture with a photo edit software like office picture manager. Resize the picture to 300 x 300 to make it fit on the forum.

I like the PowerToy for image resizing. Just install it and then you can right-click on the file and resize without even opening it. You can either create a copy of the desired size or size down the original. http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/

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THANKS for that hint. I had been using photobucket with great success. But, photobucket decided to change EVERYTHING. Their redesign IS NOT user friendly. I could resize a picture for here in 20 seconds. Now after a good hour I can't figure out how to do just about ANY of their editing now. Looks like I'm shopping for another photo workshop.

cant I use paint? I have windows7 64 bit dell. resize i will remember that also. everyone here is the BEST. thank you.

i bought a cybershot 14.1 MP. wish me luck,seems like this camera can do a lot more than what I need it for, and the instructions are a little overwhelming. I will try a few pics on easy, or auto mode, and see what I get.

penny pretty wrote:i bought a cybershot 14.1 MP. wish me luck,seems like this camera can do a lot more than what I need it for, and the instructions are a little overwhelming. I will try a few pics on easy, or auto mode, and see what I get.

Nice choice. Find your menu button...should be top left of your touch screen. Find the little flower for your macro shots. Start playing with "close auto-focus". Try with then without the flash. The best light is natural sunlight. Have some fun then post us some good ones!

TheJonasCollegeFund wrote:THANKS for that hint. I had been using photobucket with great success. But, photobucket decided to change EVERYTHING. Their redesign IS NOT user friendly. I could resize a picture for here in 20 seconds. Now after a good hour I can't figure out how to do just about ANY of their editing now. Looks like I'm shopping for another photo workshop.

Have you ever tried GIMP? It can do a bunch of things, and there is a lot of documentation (including on resizing images). A lot of it is excessive for my "low level" image editing. For normal resizing, I just use "pbrush" a.k.a. "mspaint."

TY jonas, and all.NOW i found I really need a tripod, ordered one of the flexible ones cheap, see if it does the job for a table shot.

TheJonasCollegeFund wrote:

penny pretty wrote:i bought a cybershot 14.1 MP. wish me luck,seems like this camera can do a lot more than what I need it for, and the instructions are a little overwhelming. I will try a few pics on easy, or auto mode, and see what I get.

Nice choice. Find your menu button...should be top left of your touch screen. Find the little flower for your macro shots. Start playing with "close auto-focus". Try with then without the flash. The best light is natural sunlight. Have some fun then post us some good ones!

I was just reading this old thread and found this info to be very helpful.... just wanted to bring it up to the top of my posts again..