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Ideal Settings for Macro


schmebay

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Not only am I new to Leica Cameras, I am also new serious photography. I have a semi-decent Samsung less than a year old, a touchscreen Sony and a Nikon Coolpix. But I had to have theLeica D-LUX 4 .. I was looking at the D-Lux 4 when I bought my Samsung and let some camera salesman talk me into buying the Samsung. Maybe because they didn't carry the Leica... ya think ??

 

I take pictures of jewelry, coins and my grandchildren and pets .. MOSTLY coins and jewelry. My daughter-in-law takes much better pictures .. Pretty sure she went to school for photography .. I'm thinking that if I go to her with my camera setting questions, she will start begging me to give her my camera .. sooooo ...

 

I received my camera yesterday, played with it for a while .. downloaded the Lumix manual because I read here that it is easier to follow than the Leica manual but I was wondering if there is somewhere or someone who could give me a push in the right direction by telling me what would be the ideal camera settings for coins and jewelry.

 

I have been using a nylon light box [is that what you call it] all sides are white but the bottom and back is blue. I think that silver looks nice with blue .. I have lights placed outside, shining in on each side of the 'tent.'

 

I have also just recently purchased this metal light light box that is really small and would be useless for anything larger than coins or jewelry. Thing is - it came with no instructions and I am clueless as to how it should be set up .. I will take a pictuure of that later .. I actually can't see how this is a good box ..

 

I will continue reading the manual and looking for posts, but maybe someone can give me some tips ..

 

ONE LAST THING ... Leica .. how is that pronounced ? Is it like: LIE KA ??

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You're starting at the sharp end of photography because jewelry tends to be shiny and reflective, which cameras find hard to meter for. Camera meters expect everything to reflect only 18% of the light falling on it but shiny objects reflect 90 - 100% of the light so the camera's meter can easily be fooled into underexposing or blowing the highlights.

 

Secondly, macro photography tends to be difficult because the depth of field will be very shallow (since the camera is so close to the subject) unless you stop the lens's aperture right down (to f/8 on the DL4).

 

The DL4 is very well designed for macro photography because at the wide angle end (24mm) it will focus down to 1 cm (1/2 an inch). But this can sometimes obscure the light source from the object.

 

As a rough starter I recommend that you softly light the jewelry from the side to minimise 'hot' reflections (specular highlights) into the lens that would fool the meter. Mount your DL4 on a tripod, set ISO to 160, select 'A' setting (aperture priority), set the aperture to f/8 with the tiny joystick, set the camera to manual focus with the slider on the side of the lens and find the focus you're happy with. (Tip: you can use auto focus to find rough focus and then flip the slider to manual and make the finer adjustments. Use you manual focus assist, which will temporarily enlarge the centre of the picture to make it easier to focus.) Metering might be tricky so use trial and error or get hold of an incident light meter and manually set the camera to its reading. Set your white balance to AWB unless you're using tungsten or fluorescent lighting.

 

Good luck!

 

Pete.

Edited by farnz
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For coin photography Google 'co-axial lighting using a beam splitter' and see if anything comes up. It's easy to make a beam splitter using ordinary glass or semi reflecting glass and for small coins a 6x7 plain glass slide mount might be easily adaptable. With a beam splitter you will also need a light source preferably with some form of condenser to make the beam as straight/parallel as possible. Semi reflecting glass can be obtained from Surplus Shed. Co-axial lighting is a very penetrating type of light that is perpendicular to the film or sensor plane and parallel to lens axis. Once set up to photograph the obverse or reverse of a coin there is no real need to stop the lens down to a small aperture because the depth of the coin surface is only a millimeter or less - thus an aperture of f5.6 will probably be sufficient - especially with a small sensor camera.

 

Cheers

 

dunk

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I started looking for articles/descriptions ref co-axial lighting and this is one that almost describes it quite well and might give anyone who reads it some basic information about the technique.

http://www.packereng.com/pdf/axial.pdf

In this particular article a cover glass has been used as a beam splitter and it is supported at 45 degrees by means of a small rectangular cardboard tube. The word almost was used because the apparatus will work much better if BLACK card is used. I have in the past made a similar piece of apparatus using balsa wood which was lined with black velvet and used a proper semi-silvered beam splitter. If I can find it I'll post some pictures.

 

Cheers

 

dunk

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Here's another article specifically about coin photography where the author uses pseudo co-axial lighting and also ring flash

 

Coin Photography 2008

 

And here is another article which in the last section describes co-axial lighting really well and illustrates a very good result from same:

 

http://www.coinimaging.com/photography.html

 

Cheers

 

dunk

Edited by dkpeterborough
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