Lighting, Pics And Grading

You are certainly getting there. From what I see you still have a bit too much reflection going on. Try to diffuse the light from your light bulbs and see if you can duplicate the sunlight pictures. This can be done simply by placing a tissue or something in front of the light. Remember, the light will get hot.

You could also try having the coin next to a white wall and having a light shine into the wall, thus only receiving the "reflection" of the light from the wall and no direct pointing. Also, how close are you to the coin and what type of camera.

As a note, your second set is very nice.

Keep in mind, you're working with particularly difficult subjects in Peace dollars. Even well-struck, they don't offer really sharp contrast between fields and devices. So, although I'm not suggesting that you lower your expectations, be aware that a circulated Peace dollar isn't the ideal coin to be perfecting your photography skills with, as it's not going to give you those "eye-popping" results available with designs that have better relief.

There's a reason why I use copper for most of my examples in this forum.

Have you looked around at some of the threads here regarding camera placement and use? I think your Peace dollars might be best-served by one lamp, at a bit of an angle, around 10:00 to the coin, like so:



You have a very good basic camera, and you should be able to expect similar results to this, once you get it dialed-in. Try backing the camera off a little bit - shoot for a final size of about 800 pixels instead of the 1000 you're getting - and that might allow the camera to get a nicer focus and give you more room to play with lighting.