1869 Shield Nickel, Best Photo Yet...

The photo looks pretty good. My only comment is that relying on sunlight for your coin photos is going to be a hit or miss thing and you'll never get the same quality twice. If you prefer the more diffuse look that sunlight gives, I suggest putting together a "tent" or some diffusers or reflectors that you can light artificially. This will give you some control over the "ambient" lighting and also manipulate it to have the qualities you're looking for.

Take this (very, very nice) image, and contrast it with the lighting and appearance you used on the "Perry's Victory in the other thread. In a perfect world, a user desiring opinions would post both types of lighting in separate images. The technical characteristics of your Shield nickel are better-represented by this lighting; the luster better shown by the more direct lighting.

Now, with that said - and this is stuff I hope you'll wait a little bit to add to your arsenal, while we're still working on your raw technique - it is possible to combine the two. You can achieve grading-quality detail while also representing luster effectively in one image. Here's an example, with the understanding that more than one other poster here has already exceeded my skill in this regard:



I used two diffused Jansjos for that image (Ray would have a fit if he knew what the diffusers were ( )) and achieved what I think to be a reasonably-effective one-shot gradable image.

Canon tutorial coming as promised; I have to get with a couple of other members for details regarding it which you'll see in a thread I'm about to post.