T2i First Shot Ever

....and where do I send my coins for a photography shoot? :)

NICE WORK!!

Now, let's talk about postprocessing.

I don't know if what I posted above is an improvement, not having the coin in-hand. It's your latest image (I pulled the full-size one from your site), using the Sharpen filter at 40% and 30% of Contrast, in that order. I am very surprised that I was able to add 30% Contrast; 10% is the norm and many coins start looking funny at 20%. It's a testament to the basic quality of your shots.

If you're going to do sharpness/color/contrast adjustments, always do them to the original-size image, before scaling it down. Adjustments which are borderline-objectionable at 2200px are much less so at 800px.

Great job, its great to see such improvement through your posts! Congrats on the glass too!

PS Nice coin!

I listed them exactly in my last post. Sharpen Filter at 40%, Contrast at 30%, in that order, using the Gimp. Nothing else, except resizing to post here (I scaled to 800px, saved at 80% Jpeg Quality, for a reasonable filesize from Richard's 2500px, 2.5Mb originals). Richard's basic images were that good. They needed nothing else.

It's a testament (yeah, I'm gonna get a plug in) to the fundamental combination of Canon dSLR, Macro lens and most especially Zoom Browser. Competitors can definitely equal the quality, but they cannot offer it at anywhere near the same price.

I very much favor the Gimp over Photoshop - "free" beats the living snot out of "pay" - and I feel the Gimp does much better with Sharpening. Mind you, I say this as someone who has thrown the money at Adobe for Photoshop. I don't use it.

Looking good Nohope! Beautiful shot. Upgrading my gear soon. You know what they say "Spend what you can on the body and take a loan out for the glass".

Wow!.....Look at all those steps!

Great shot! Boy, you are hooked now...there will be no stopping you

Alan