Now this is close, I didn't measure the distance, but I know it was A LOT CLOSER than the 18" minimum focus distance of my Kodak DC290.

That is the one thing I miss the most. Before cutting the lawn (or the poor excuse for a lawn we have in Florida), I would go out and look for those tiny flowers that grow in the yard. It's really amazing what is out there when you look, I'd go out and take close-up pictures of 1/16" flowers.

But, I digress, back to the coin. As close as I got to get this picture, you ain't seen nothing yet! Say you want to tell your friend about the detail on a coin, or in this case, the date and mintmark(?) on the coin. You can see every nick on this old dime! Take a look!

Unfortunately, the camera went on the fritz. I can't take pictures outside anymore, I guess the iris is stuck wide open, and I don't want to risk "fixing" it. (Sometimes I get lucky, othertimes there are parts left over and it's really broke then!) I have a new camera now and I guess it's time to pass this excellent macro focus camera to someone who can use it for a specific purpose.

You can set this camera up to take pictures of your entire coin collection, and you would be amazed at how easy it can be. You may even want to get this camera for a club or group of friends! You can connect the camera to a Television (RCA Video or S-Video) and see what you'll capture, can you imagine focusing on a 27" screen! There's even a remote control that will change the focus and click the shutter without touching the camera again. The best setup would include a copy stand or some jury-rig that will move (and lock) up and down to frame the picture. Lighting should be dim because of the iris, I used indirect lighting from a flashlight, just enough to brighten the area directly under the camera. The camera flash can be deactivated; there is a standard tripod connector on the camera (but not very well balanced if you ask me). The 8 Meg Memory will hold 91 pictures at high resolution, and you can transfer it to your computer at least 4 ways. There is an included serial adapter that will work on a standard serial port, it is also supposed to work over a phone line (I never tried this). You can also plug the memory card into a standard PCMCIA slot or you could probably use an inexpensive card reader. The Serial Port method takes about 1 minute per picture, slow - but it works; the PCMCIA slot is almost as fast as a hard drive! One word of warning, a friend was interested, but he has windows ME on his computer, and there are no updated drivers. It works fine on my windows 95 and 98 computers though.