Yeah some really great ideas already! I can give blekenbleu's suggestion a go first, though I can't use a lens hood as I have my custom ring flash attached to it and there's only so much I can raise the coin off of the platform before it becomes a bit impractical and the greater the height, the more...

Would it be feasible to shoot the coin twice, using two different lighting ratios for coin versus background, and then construct a computational mask from the difference? --Rik Interesting idea, do you imagine it would be necessary to repeat most of the stack for the second focus stack, or just eno...

I'll answer not as an expert in macro photography but as an expert in industrial machine vision systems. I would use independently-adjustable light sources for the foreground and background. In industrial applications we'd often use fiber-optic light panels but you could use a light table or simple...

Here's some photos to provide more context. Photo 1: coin against white background with no edge reflector Photo 2: coin against white background with edge reflector Photo 3: 3D printed ring light (still need to flock the inner "tube" but it's removeable and I haven't been using it for these photos) ...

Hello again, I've been more focused on coin photography the past little while than insects and other macro but I've been dealing with an issue for awhile that I think you lot might be able to help me with. My setup in short: I do 1x mag focus stacks of coins, namely ancient coins, which are typicall...

Much cleaner and lighter setup than what I tried last year, might have to give that a go sometime. Though with mine I had a degree of variable magnification. To solve the inverted image problem, I mounted my phone upside-down to the camera and used the Sony app to see a live view. Can't recall how w...

If I've understood you correctly, are you then suggesting that a less bright background may help solve this issue? Yes. As a rule of thumb, edges appear to move "away from the light" as they go out of focus. If the background is brighter than the subject, then the estimated position of the edge mov...

in my museum work I usually take photos on a black velvet background, with the object raised to blur the dust that the velvet may have, and placing white paper on the velvet, so that only a black ring can be seen through the camera. This way I keep the specular reflection of the edge of the object ...

Cam, thank you for the further information and access to your source images. I'm very happy to hear that you have found an effective way of meeting your goals. At the same time, I want to share some of my own observations and thoughts about the sample stack that you sent. Given your overall situati...

Sent you an email with a link to download the files Rik, let me know how you get on! I tried your suggestions on another coin and got great results after initially having the same problems as earlier. Here you can see the result of a one-click magic wand background removal in Photoshop, followed by ...

Cam, this exact problem has some unusual aspects so I would be interested to receive a copy of your source images. Please email me as support@zerenesystems.com if that's a possibility. That said, I think the general problem is that your background is so bright that you're getting troublesome specul...

I'm consistently running into a problem with Zerene Stacker when it comes to focus stacks of coins and am hoping someone here (if not Rik himself) might have some ideas about how to fix it. The issue is that in a PMax stack (left), the edge of the coin becomes almost translucent and the edges are a ...

Some issues I’ve run into (which I now realize is likely user error on my behalf) is that the flashes eventually don’t recycle quickly enough to keep up with the stack photo captures if they’re a big series (~30+ shots for a small subject a few mm in length). I have learned from browsing the forums...

Just speed-reading this thread for now as it's getting late but already I see some good ideas and clarifications have come from it! I saw mjkzz asking a few times about specific setups that had documented ghosting so I thought I'd quickly share in case it is useful in helping troubleshoot the possib...

That thread looks way better than what I would have thought possible. It can likely take quite a number of operation cycles. I doubt the result would be this good with the SLS parts I usually order. Not sure how it would compare to SLS myself as I haven't seen any parts made via SLS but sounds like...