I pulled out the Merax One Shot Photo Studio again for this macro photography of a weathered coin. I wasn’t interested in taking a lot of time for this. I set up the studio against the wall. I stuck the coin to the wall with a bit of tacky putty. I laid the studio so that the white fabric sides diffused the light from the lamps. The top was open to the room. I used my SB-600 Speedlight with an alcohol bottle diffuser. A cheap, but effective macro photography studio.
Coins are popular subject for macro photography. They are good for pixel-peeping, for seeing minute flaws in lens quality. Today I just wanted to photograph this interesting coin. It had the bronze cast when I found it. I picked it up off the ground in a park. Actually, it was on top of the bit of sand I used last week for a texture shot. The coin itself is only about ten years old. I have no idea how much of its time it spent on the ground. It has an ancient look that I found intriguing. Other than brushing off the sand, I have not altered the coin. The coin to the naked eye has more of a gray tone; in my studio lighting it picked up a warmer, more brown-bronze tone. In post processing, I chose to keep the tone on the warm side.
This photograph is ISO 800, F/5.6, 1/60 sec, -1.0 EV, with flash fired. I set the camera on vivid, though I shot RAW so that was editable afterward. I like to keep things on the vivid side. Probably a side-effect of the minor color-blindness I recently discovered. I used my Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 AF, one of my best cheap Nikon photography favorites; this 60mm is the best cheap Nikon macro photography lens. The photographs in this blog gallery are taken mostly with the equipment I feature on our home page.
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