Having the right equipment is one facet of taking good pictures. Personally I have an ordinary Canon A70 3.2 Megapixel camera, and to aid my in my post production I have my trusty Apple Powerbook.

Equipment is one thing - who's actually behind the camera is another matter entirely. I've been an artist for almost as long as I can remember and in my artistic development I've been trained in photography. Also, I've been a coin collector since I was 13 years of age. This is where training and experience come together.

Sure, I'd like a brand spanking new Digital SLR Camera that supports a RAW format up to 9 megapixels which comes with a Macro lens (and a whole lot of other technical bells and whistles), but I make do with what I have. I impovise a lot, using a wide array of light sources you may find around the house. I have no complex lighting equipment because, quite simply, it's impractical given how much I move around.

There may be times when I use a tripod, sometimes I'm even propped up on my elbows. I just try to capture an image that highlight's the coin's design and attributes.

As I mentioned I do some post production work; I may have to adjust the shape of the coin because I shot it on an angle in order to capture the toning for instance. I may eliminate a speck of dust, glare from a plastic PGGS, NGC or ANACS slab, or I could feasibly eliminate any distracting mark at all creating an artificial MS70 coin (made for aesthetic purposes only of course).