The Macro Shots of the Rebellion

I have a small collection of Civil War tokens and storefronts. Nothing major – a few of the local “Straight’s Elephantine Shoe Store” tokens that feature a booted elephant on the obverse; some Benjamin & Herrick Fruit Dealer tokens, including a few “cracked die” examples; and some patriotic “Shoot Him on the Spot” tokens – including the variant with the typo “Shoot Him on the Spoot.”

I gotta do something with these coins. Yeah, putting them in holders and whatnot is fine and dandy, but that’s not good enough for me. I’ve tried macro photographing them before, but my setup was a mish-mosh of ill-fitting focus rings and poor lighting. 

Let’s take a moment and try something. I’ll take three examples of my Civil War coin collection, and give them each one more macro try. If I like what I see … then we’re golden. If not … at least I tried.

I first grabbed my “Shoot Him on the Spoot” token, and combined it with a patriotic postcard. A few focus stacked shots with my Nikon 55mm 1:3.5 lens, and …

Yeah, that photo sucks. You can’t really see the coin, the white balance is off by a country mile, and all the focus stacking in the world won’t get rid of those nasty dust spots. If I entered this in a competition, the judge would take a Sharpie and circle every dust spot and mail the photo back to me postage due. 

All right, let’s try something else. A while back, I purchased a set of extender bellows that can space between the camera and the lens. I attached my Df to the back, and strapped the macro lens to the front.

Let’s try that “Shoot Him on the Spoot” coin one more time.

And …

Well, any claim that I couldn’t get worse on this … just went out the door. The focus is too close. You can’t really see the whole “Shoot Him on the Spoot” reference. It’s just “On the Spoot.” Which makes no sense whatsoever. 

All right. Screw the Spoot. Let’s see of I can get a good image from one of these Straight’s Elephantine tokens. And …

As much as I would love to use this coin … this is my third failure. Even flipping the image to black and white did nothing. The definition’s just not there. Yeah, it kinda looks like an elephant with a set of marching boots, but … that’s it. Nothing spectacular.

Okay. One more try. I pulled out one of my Benjamin & Herrick Fruit Dealer coins, one that was struck with a cracked die. I’ve photographed this coin before, but as I previously said … those efforts were subpar. 

Let’s try this. 

Hello, Competition Season. Hello, hello, hello. This picture has it all. It tells a story. It’s got the detail. It’s definitive. The words are clearly identifiable. You don’t need a backstory for this image. I mean, would you buy your fruit from a dealer whose coins might reflect the quality of their wares? 

Short pile for 2024. And don’t argue with me. I got it this time. 

And that works for me.