Novice Photos Taken

Both of your posted images are a nice start; let's get you up to speed with cropping and image sizing/hosting before we tweak the actual photographic process. We want first to see the images themselves in their best-possible light.

Edamos,
I can't give any advise as your photos are already better than I post.If the Trade dollar photo looks anything
like it does in hand that is a great photo.The devices on the obverse look like they are just sitting on the fields.
That is a coin with personality.
The others will be posting when they get the chance and you will be getting some great advise.
regards
coffeecup57

I most likely should never have found this site. It is eating up all of my free time. I am learning to take what I hope are better coin images...but now with looking up VAM's, Photobucket and working on lighting, focus and attempting to image the coin as close to it looks in hand...hour after hour go by. Here is another attempt, but for some reason my shutter speed is always low. I will keep at it until it doesn't take half an hour per coin to get something I like!

In truth, Edamos, I'm having a hard time coming up with any advice to give you. These are some tremendous images. The 1878-CC is exquisite. VAM-27, right? You've a nice feel for lighting, achieving excellent detail with no washout. The only possible improvement is larger images; I don't know if you've pushed your camera to its' closest-possible distance to the coin to make the images larger on the sensor, but if you could make a Morgan come out at 800px instead of the 500 currently achieved....they're a *little* small for accurate attribution.

This involves additional complexity with lighting, though.

The proof is in the pudding; 1/8 is obviously not a problem for your equipment. Don't sweat the exposure if the result pleases the eye. I should think going from f8/ISO100 would make a huge exposure difference from f4/ISO400, though; are you running in full Manual mode?

Here are a few more pictures. Still need to get a little better focus and I'm thinking about looking for a new camera setup I can tether to my computer. What would a good macro length be if I was only going to get one lens?

If you're using full Manual settings on your existing camera, shoot for something like this with the average coin you've been posting: ISO100, f/5.6 (I'd normally say f/8 but your camera should have sufficient depth of field at the wider aperture) and exposure of around 1/100. If 1/100 is too dark, ISO200 or possibly 400 will help, and you can always lengthen the exposure. That's just the point at which you might want to consider differing lighting solutions.

Mind you, your results are already excellent.

If you're doing a bespoke lens, and want a tethering solution, you want a Canon APS-C dSLR and Canon's 100mm Macro lens. It'll easily reach a coin the size of a Morgan, and with an 18MP Canon sensor it's capable of magnification like this:



With that said, if you're seriously thinking about upgrading your equipment, you need to read this thread first:

https://goccf.com/t/158182