Opinions Or Pointers W/ Sd780is

If you were only an inch from the coin, then you didn't have much left to crop and those pics were stupid big before you downsized them

You're doing this even better than I thought. Email me a full-sized image, and I'll show you what I mean.

^^^^

I strongly urge you not to listen to that man, whose God-given skills are ridiculous and he probably shot that with his eyes closed.

For the purpose of our conversation, stick to newer Lincolns. They're very, very difficult to get right because of the combination of luster, color and indifferent relief; I suspect you could duplicate DVCollector's tremendous results today with a similar coin. You've already chosen the hard way, and are getting great results with it. The rest (excepting lustrous silver, another problem entirely) will come easy.

Newer pennies are a problem for me.But I wasn't able to email a pic to you...didn't see a way to attach it using our PM system...figured if you reply,I'll be able to do it.

I got the pic. Forgive me for not replying - your image was one of over 200 I received yesterday alone, and I'm the proverbial one-armed paperhanger these days.

It was so big I had to giggle. I had no idea you were getting such large images from that camera. It's bigger than my dSLR and 100mm Macro lens provides. Amazing results from such a tiny camera; this one just went way up on my list of "bang for the buck" coin cameras.

With that said, you're giving up a little focus in return for size, I think. The coin looks nice and sharp once downsized, but the camera's limitations show up in the fullsize image. As I thought, it was a tiny bit out-of-parallel, the left side being in focus while the right was not. You can, I think, double the distance between camera and coin during the process of experimentation. I believe you'll still have images way too large to post here, and the camera will have an easier time of focusing.

Machine Doubling. This is silly - a camera the size of a cellphone should not be able to do this.

That camera is giving you a lot wider area of experimentation than I expected. I think it's oversharpening the images - it's visible at full size, but not at posting size - and I don't think that's going to be correctable. So, there may be a point where you draw the line at distance because the sharpening will be noticeable when the image is downsized to 800 pixels (and this camera is perfectly capable of providing grading-quality 800 pixel images).

I am truly impressed with the SD780IS.

You will find the Gimp's Sharpening algorithms to be superior to any others, at least in my opinion. Sharpen last, after any adjustments in Levels or Contrast, and before you downsize. Be viewing the coin full-size, even if you're only seeing part of the coin, and have letter details on the screen when you do it. That's where the Sharpen effects will show up the most. Then back out far enough to look at the whole coin at once, to see if you like the result.

You should be able to use as much as 40% Sharpen on the blurriest images; I use 20%-30% regularly even on nice shots. Just because I can.

Always use the largest-possible image size. The smaller sizes just use less of the sensor; it's not like they'll be any sharper. The bigger they are to begin with, the more room you'll have to play with camera distance and therefore easier lighting.