One Light Or Two

You've obviously already got most of this figured out. White balance is perfect, camera placement is right, focus is sharp. The reason for the scanner comments is that scanners tend to hide luster, which is important for true evaluations of a coin.




There is no one perfect solution. Lighting changes for differing coins - I light entirely differently between worn copper and lustrous silver. Get a two-light solution, and play with it. I suspect you're not going to improve much on the Roosevelt with two lights, but the Lincoln might - the extra light will add more washed-out areas like you see at 3:00 and 9:00, but your exposure will be enough shorter that they might end up a nicer look. Here's a two-light solution of a lustrous Lincoln:



Two lights let me stop down for better depth of field while still shortening exposure, and let me illuminate things like the weak I in LIBERTY, the bowtie details, and the strong IGWT. A single light wouldn't have covered all those bases at once - something would have had to suffer.

Thank you, but the coin gets the credit for that one, not me. You couldn't have taken a bad pic of that monster. It only made MS65, believe it or not.

It's all here, and it's free:

http://www.gimp.org/