Pennies

Are you on a tripod or some other stable stand? Are you using a timed shutter, so you're not touching the camera when the shutter snaps? Also, try tightening the aperture a little; f/3.5 might not be giving you enough depth of field to keep the whole coin in focus. That will necessitate a longer exposure - if you go to f/4.0, change from 1/40 to maybe 1/15 to get the same brightness. Chances are, if you're on a tripod and timed shutter, the longer exposure won't hurt.

Ok heres my new try. I still cant focus on the tops of the wheat heads and theyre still not even close to superdaves.. Also on my camera there is a color option. On this one I used the vidid setting. Also superdave what kind of settings did you use on your s2 for lincoln cents? Your pics are toooooo goood.

Settings

iso 400
exposure 1/200
aperture f4.0
custom white balace
vidid colors
macro

http://www.coincommunity.org/galler...hp?pos=-7793

http://www.coincommunity.org/galler...hp?pos=-7792

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Also superdave what kind of settings did you use on your s2 for lincoln cents?

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Those shots weren't done with my S2, zacharycash. They were done with my 350D, and the lens itself cost more than an S2.

Your second set is nice - they're clear enough to grade from, although the color is a little, well, vivid.

The lighting is good; any adjustments you make from here will be moving the light(s) on the order of an inch at a time. If you're on a white background, the color is too heavily weighted in the yellow.

Try an identical shot, only lose the Vivid, and use ISO 200 and 1/100 exposure. See if that makes any difference in the clarity, just in case the higher ISO is introducing noise.

You would be hard pressed to beat those. F4 is still pretty wide. What are they like at 1/50 f5.6 or 1/25 f8?

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Zach, where did the pics go?

So why do people choose wide apertures?

I would have thought to use the smallest aperture I can, to maximize the depth of field. My digital camera has a macro setting, which let's me set it on a table-top tripod just 6 inches from the coin, but that gives a very shallow focal plane, to the point that if the coin is not exactly parallel to the ccd chip, some of it is not in focus. So just using a small aperture, longer shutter speed fixes that.

Also, from my 35 mm days, most lens distortions and imperfections are at the outer edges of the lens. So I tend not to use the outer edges, by stopping down a little bit. Granted, this may not be a problem with the smaller lenses used for digitals, since smaller lenses are easier to make.

Wow semi dead thread but.
Aperature
well all the way to f 8 isn't a must but wide open is likely to not carry the focus if you are at an angle and if you camera is off a bit wide open will never be there. In the dark room we use to close the aperature down 2 notches it was well known that most lenses focus the best a couple clicks from wide open. with todays computer designed lenses I don't know if thats still true, but would assume so.

shutter speeds; even with a tripod if you have a camera that flips it's mirror before exposing ie any SLR you will get camera shake. find out if you can lock the mirror up before triggering the shutter and use a remote shutter release.
I am finding that lighting is very interesting with coins. If you have a mirror like proof you want to show the wonderfully smooth reflection but at the same time you need to show the depth of the die strike. I recently was shooting a Morgan silver dollar that refused to co operate. I would look at it and it was mirror like (not proof like but a good shine) with nice deep details. I would shoot it and the details looked flat. so I went for the depth of the strike and the coin looked dark. it was a bugger. I guess I'll try it again later with the beam spliter (axial) light