Help With Taking And Editing Quality Pictures

For editing (or "adjusting") pictures I recommend looking into Photoshop Elements.

I view the image coming out of the camera a "raw material" because it always needs some sort of editing to make it publishable. Always. Once you accept this you will make changes to the way you work in order to make the in-camera image as editable as possible.

Many folks use RAW processing to accomplish this, but RAW on its own is not enough. You MUST make sure that the image is not over-exposed, or even RAW processing will be futile. This is why I recommend moderate under-exposure to ensure capturing the highlights in full detail.

Just as important is to ensure the Red color channel does not compress, since the luminance is mostly in Green and the camera will push Red to saturation even while it significantly under-exposes Green. I'm particularly sensitive to this since most of my photography is of Cents, which have strong Red. Over-exposing on Red changes the overall color of the coin, which is obviously undesirable. Turning down Saturation helps with this, keeping Reds or Blues from being over-exposed.

Overall under-exposure and reduced saturation pushes down the blacks even further, but they can be recovered with RAW techniques. If you prefer shooting jpg (as I do) then minimizing the in-camera contrast can ensure the dynamic range of the image is well-compressed and that the darker areas are not pushed to black during jpg conversion.

What you end up with is an image that is easy to adjust for publishing, ie good "raw material" for post-processing and publishing.

We still don't know what equipment you have to teach you. Are you planning on purchashing new gear, or going to use what you have?

OK, that's enough info for me to feel like I can be helpful.

First, there's a limit to how much magnification your camera can give you. You cannot enlarge an image without losing detail; it violates the laws of physics. You can usually fudge a little in without wrecking the image, but if you're looking to do mint mark details you are not getting there with this camera. It lacks the ability to shoot a large-enough image, and I don't believe there's any sort of add-on lens which can mount to it. So the threshold is fairly low; this camera is designed for trips to the park in your pocket, not macro shooting.

That said, it's 16MP and has a minimum focusing distance of 2cm. If you can figure out lighting at that distance, you might be surprised at the results.

The possibility exists that your images are larger than you think. The computer is unlikely to show you the image full-size. As you've mentioned being a bit of a dinosaur, I have to ask if you're familiar with image sizes and how all that works.

As far as processing goes, never do anything in the camera that you can do at the computer. The computer is a far stronger tool, the camera kinda crude by comparison. So let the camera do as little as possible.

It's been a very_long_time since I've magnified an image, so I don't know where it would fit in the postprocessing workflow. Think I'd try doing that first, before any further step. I think magnifying Sharpening and Contrast would screw up their effect.

Your axial lighting setup is preventing you from getting the camera anywhere near enough to the coin to use its' capabilities. On the other hand, lighting becomes more difficult the closer you are to the coin.

I raised the glass just enough to slide only the mintmark under it. This enabled me to get the lense super close to the coin and still have light. I hope this helps others like myself with inexpensive cameras.

I still do not understand why you are limiting yourself with axial lighting. Without expensive beamsplitter glass you only get 25-30% of the light you're using - the rest is lost - and it forces your camera into low-light settings. It's a huge compromise in capability only useful for toning and Proofs.