It's A Start (And Leaves Infinite Room For Improvement)

ContraJame-I have been interested in the Jansjo also, but they are not available online (if I am looking at the right model). I, like you do not have an IKEA in easy driving range. I would be interested if you find them somewhere else.

Thanks SuperDave-just ordered two; hope this helps my pics.

ContraJame...sorry, coming in late on this one but I would like to suggest a couple things...

I think the SX130 has a 4000x3000 sensor, right? It appears you are filling approx 50% vertically of the sensor with your Dollar. This implies a raw size of approx 1500 vertical height for the Dollar. My suggestion is processing the image by first doing a downsizing of original image to 2000x1500, then cropping an 800x800 image that will contain the coin with a little black field around it. Right now your coin image is just under 1000x1000 and I am having trouble figuring out how you got that size based on your original image. By doing a precise 2x downsize then crop, you will give the jpg algorithm it's best hope of a high fidelity resize...Ray

You may consider downsizing even from 1000x1000 to 500x500 since you will get a boost in sharpness when you do it, and 500x500 is still plenty big for web publishing...Ray

Edited to add...here's 2x downsized plus some levels adjustment on your first image...

I was most impressed with the very top picture in this thread. It really makes her look beautiful. If I could take pics that good, I'd call it done right there.

The more I mull it over the more I think I need to take a scientific approach in an attempt to improve. It seems like either I need to make a drastic change or I'm already at 90% and as is typical the last 10% will take a long time to squeeze out.

Played with some postproccessing in photoshop. Modified the color ever so slightly. Upped the contrast and downed the brightness to level things out. Still very far from ideal but I think I've improved a bit. I really need to work on lighting and color. I'm still not getting good focus in the 2:00 area and the lower 1/3 of my coins still tend to be a bit dark due to 10-2 light positioning.

As I recall I had them as high as possible. I haven't toyed much with working distance. These are just under 1000X1000 pixels after crop and 50% reduction. I need to figure out proper working distances for each coin accounting for reductions to land in the 750-800 pixel size for each coin size. Maybe that will give me enough room.