Canon S5-Is - (Help)

Ok. First I took 2 pictures with out my macro lens. They are sized down to about 75 percent of the original size. I took them in super macro because I couldn't get any focus or size in macro. I'm just using two 60watt daylight bulbs ( like $5 at home depot). I'm not using a diffuser. With super macro it is very hard to get decent light on a coin. Here's what I came up with.




Here are the two pictures I took with my 500D macro lens. The originals are 2300 x 2300. I had to size them down a lot. These I also took with two daylight bulbs, again I'm not using a diffuser. I took these a lot farther away, so I was able to get better light on the coin.





Both of these I took with the camera attached to the computer using the "zoombrowser" program that came with the camera. As you can tell the ones I took with the macro lens are much better. The lens can be bought on Amazon for about 120 dollars plus the adapter. It's the Canon 500D Close Up Lens.

Edit again: These pictures are uneditted.

I would suggest shooting in Aperture Priority mode and keeping the aperture between f/8 and f/11 (usually the "sweet spot" for most lenses where you get the sharpest image and least chromatic aberration, etc.) By all means shoot at a different f-stop if your S5 IS has a different sweet spot. At f/8 to f/11 you should have enough DOF to compensate for a little bit of misalignment in the plane of the lens and the plane of the coin. Beyond f/11, especially if you get up toward f/18 or higher, you start to introduce other problems that will reduce your image quality. At f-stops below f/8, and especially below f/5.6 you really start to lose DOF, so if the coin is tilted ever so slightly relative to the camera, you get one edge sharp, and the other out of focus.

Just some thoughts. The pictures that you submitted are better than 90% of the coin photos you see on the internet, so you're not very far away! Your hard work is paying off.