Most of my photography these days is digital...sad to admit that, but most of my subjects these days are coins.

The enlargement is usually about 5 to 10 times actual size.

Ive been approached by other collectors to do some images of their coins, with wet plate.

A scary proposition, in that Ive not tried this before. Ive been thinking of using a mirror, and shooting downward, since obviously the coin image cannot be reversed.

The first thought is to use an F2 Leica summar lens, with a long extension.

Anyone ever try this, and have good results?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2011 06:32PM by Ray Morgenweck.

You could always make a wet plate holder for an enlarger Ray. I did that with an Elwood I had years ago.

You could use a reversing prism, pointing down. I've seen the modern ones for process cameras pretty cheap on ebay. You can make a platform underneath to hold the coin, and put a lot of light on it with mirrors....

I tried the reversing prism and a Euryscope VII to make this halfplate.

As I sat looking at the 'wallpaper'
of a coin image on the computer screen.....I began to think about reversing technology here and flipping the image around on the monitor...bringing the camera into the office and.....

Ha! There's more than one way to do something. Here is my setup for the above:

so , youre roughly one to one there, or a slight enlargement?

...gotta get me one of those.

The problem with working close, doing macro, of coins...as I see it is one of lighting. The reversing prism, or a first surface mirror, shooting down...may take care of that.

I did do a 5X7 once of a 16mm film cell, but that was taped to a window. That was done using the leica 50mm lens..and getting quite close.

To answer your question Ray, yes, it's about 1:1 magnification. The lighting definitely was an issue. The 6" F9 lens became MUCH slower with about 14" of bellows. This was a 4 minute exposure with a mirror doubling the light coming in the window above. Still....it might be fun to play with.

Though unmarked this came from an estate sale with a CC Harrison Globe lens. I didn't get that. I had several people check it and they believe it is a rare Harrison prism.

You could use a process prism which I see on Ebay often.