Need Advice-Starting Remote Shooting Again

Thanks everyone. I'm going to take most of the day and work on the suggestions. I'll post an image or 2 for your evaluation.

OK, a few things.

1) White balance looks off. Too red, unless this coin is red for some reason
2) Still showing some blow-outs, especially in red. White balancing may help, but I'd turn down EV by 1/3 more
3) Overall lighting is good
4) Contrast is a bit low. I'd suggest keeping the in-camera settings, but move black to 16

Could do with a tiny bit of sharpening, 50 in DPP

Ok, I did a few things without shooting another image.

1. adjusted the red
2. sharpened to 50
3. didn't know how to adjust or move black to 16
4. turned down the ev some-for next shot

Are you using DPP for editing? Select the image, hit edit image button, and you'll see a histogram. Bottom left corner has a "0" in it. Change that to 16.

A problem with the new image you posted is you somehow changed the size, so the sharpness is messed up. I have never used the forum software but it seems to be fractionally-resizing the image, which is really bad, especially if it fractionally-enlarges it!! SD, what might be happening here? Anyway, here is the image after doing the hue change, 50 sharpening, and contrast adjust (black adjust to 16):



Doing just a bit of gamma correction ("tone curve assist" with RGB in DPP) brightens the darks a bit:

hello ham what box are you talking about. is it one of these boxes. I will share some photos which one are you wondering about. you see as they help you it helps myself as well. I to don't understand all the functions yet. maybe this will help us all

I am totally burned out for today. There is so much to absorb and learn. I will keep on trying. Here is one more shot for your comments. Sorry, but the file is way to large (21.6MB). How do I reduce the size? Will work again tomorrow pm.

ok ham take a look at this. here's your photo edited by me in DPP. plus cropped ham very nice photo you are doing a great job. I only slightly adjusted your coin to what. I like to see but you are there. lets see what the other think. have a great one

I agree with rocky, the pic is what I call good "raw material". For an image to be such it must be well-focused, color-correct, evenly-lit, and have no blown-out highlights or crushed blacks. With those criteria met, small amounts of post-processing can yield a good image.

Ham, think of the histogram as a graph of output vs input. Before any adjustment, lower left is 0,0 and upper right is 255,255. There is a straight line that goes from 0,0 to 255,255, meaning that the output vs input is perfectly linear and a 0 in the input image RGB maps to 0 in the output, and likewise for 255. Let's talk about the 4 simple adjustments:

1) Move input minimum 0 to a higher number, say 16. This will take any pixels with brightness between 0 and 15 and make them black (0). 16 is now 0. This will take an image that is too bright (commonly associated with low contrast) and make it darker with emphasis on the darker tones. It does not change the brightest highlights. It has the effect of increasing "contrast" and reducing "brightness"
2) Move input maximum 255 to a smaller number, say 200. This will take any pixels with brightness between 200 and 255 and make them white (255). This will take and image that is too dark (no highlights, again commonly associated with low contrast) and make it brighter, with emphasis on the highlights and lighter tones. It will not change the darkest shadows. It has the effect of increasing both "contrast" and "brightness"

So if you have an image with low contrast, you can do one or both of the above to increase contrast IF you want to keep either the brightest highlights or the darkest shadows constant. Generally it's advised to push the darkest shadows to black, and brightest highlights to white, to have best dynamic range and contrast in the image. By using the above two adjustments you can make both of these happen, assuming you don't already have blown-out highlights or crushed blacks. They give you much more control than using the contrast and brightness adjustment.

3) Move output minimum from 0 to a larger number, say 16. This will take pixels that are at black (0) and move them to dark (16). It affects darks and mids as well, but has no effect on brightest highlights. If you have a lot of dark tones, this will lighten the image. It has the effect of increasing brightness while decreasing contrast.

4) Move output maximum from 255 to a smaller number, say 200. This will take pixels that are near whites (255) and move them to brights (200). It affects brights and mids as well, but has no effect on darkest shadows. It has the effect of decreasing both brightness and contrast.

The above two adjustments can be made to images that are not well-balanced and have too high contrast.