About our Website

Euro Coins Index

Viewing Figures to November 2001

Viewing Figures to January 2002

Design
We have tried to keep our visual and technical design clean and simple. We are always interested in feedback and suggestions to improve it.

Images
At one stage, most of the images we used on our site were taken in-house using a Fuji Finepix S1 SLR camera, similar to a Nikon D1. We used a 90mm fixed focal length Tamron macro lens, with a Nikon ring flash. Previously we used a Ricoh 300Z.
For those interested in technical details, it produces an image size of 3.000 x 2,000 pixels compared with 640 x 480 with our old camera. For reproduction on site, we usually reduce most of the images to a width of 240 pixels, so it should take up 37.5% of a screen set to 640 x 480, or 30% of 800 x 600.
We also reduce the colour depth from 16 million to 256, to try to keep file sizes small, or download times fairly fast, whilst still providing a quality image. Depending on your modem speed, line connection, etc., most of our pictures should take about 10 to 20 seconds to download. We believe this provides a reasonable compromise.
In a few cases, we have made "big pictures" available by selecting a link from an existing page, so you can see more details of the items which particularly interest you.
Sometime in 2006, we started to add 400 pixel wide images to some of our sites, and this has now, in 2007, become our standard size.
Let us know if you find this useful.

Copyright
Please do not use any of our images without our prior permission.
Although most of the images on our site are taken in-house with our own camera, some are used by us with the permission of others.
A number of jewellery images are ©1999 by Stubbs & Co. All rights reserved.
Most of the text content is written and edited by Lawrence Chard.

Camera
As stated, we now use a Fuji S1. Whereas it took about a half hour to learn how to use our previous camera, our new one has controls all over it, took about 3 days to read and re-read the instructions, and about two months practice to achieve reasonable results. There is a custom white balance calibration setting, we mainly use a white background, so you can judge for yourself how successful the correction has been, and also what colour the subject actually is.
Three years ago when we bought our first digital camera for £400, an SLR digital cost about £6,500; by the time we bought our Fuji, the price had come down to just over £2,000 although with all the other accessories, the total still came to £4,000; a lens double the focal length would cost £1,200.
We now also own a Nikon body, which unfortunately is not compatible with the Nikon ringflash! We may junk both of them, and upgrade to a Canon EOS system.
In 2006, we did indeed junk our Nikon / Fuji / Tamron system, and bought:
Canon EOS 350D camera, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens, Canon MR-14EX Macro Ring Lite flash unit. This combination works very well as a complete system, and together with other bits and pieces such as a tripod or copy stand, is all most people would need to photograph coins or small pieces of jewellery.
Since then, we have added Canon's other Canon MR-24EX Macro Twin Lite flash unit, Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens, MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x lens, a light box, and more.

Image Size
Because we resize most of our pictures to the same size, and also because computer screen sizes and resolutions vary, it's difficult to show life sizes accurately.
We will try to include size information where necessary. If you are unsure about size of any product, please contact us for further details.

An Apology
We apologise if you find some of our pages rather lengthy, or if their is more detail than you need.
The famous mathematician Pascal apologetically said to a friend, "I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter."

Is It Successful?
You can judge for yourself. At the top right we show two graphs of our viewing statistics. Since January 2002, they have become less meaningful, because we had to split the site, make design changes and we still call some images from a different site, all to avoid bandwidth problems and balance the load on our server. Viewing figures are one thing, but sales and profits are a more concrete test of success. For the past four years the increase in our sales has probably exceeded the graph, partly because we have added more websites, this is just our original one, our actual sales have literally been rising exponentially.

Jewellery Images
Although we are fairly happy with our coin images, it really is a challenge to take great or even good photograph of jewellery such as diamond rings. Although we will continue to try and improve our photographic techniques, please be aware that our jewellery photographs don't do justice to our products.

Other Sites
As early as 1999, we realised it was a mistake to try to put all our products onto one website, and we started new sites, each with a smaller range of products, Recently we have increased this process, and now have a growing number of sites. To make it easy to find them, we have also created a new site www.chards.co.uk.

Licensing of Images
We are increasingly asked to license images for use commercially. We are normally quite happy to do this for a reasonable fee. If you wish to use any of our images, please let us know, with information about the intended use, and your proposal regarding fees. We can usually supply larger images, up to about 3,000 x 2,000 pixels and about 2.5MB. Our images are generally stored in JPEG format, we may be able to supply TIFFs on request at an extra cost, these are about 25 MB.

Feedback
We are always interested in feedback and criticism. if you have any secrets to share with us, please feel free!