Nikon Camp Chime In Please!

I understand now how you've been beating my bandwidth like a rented mule with your image postings.

The sheer size and clarity of what that combination accomplishes obliterates the similar Canon/18-55 kit. Your lens must have the ability to focus much more closely than the Canon 18-55. Which is the cause of your lighting problems - with lighting, distance from the subject is everything.

If you can shoot for, say, a cropped diameter of around 1200px for a Morgan dollar by backing the camera away from the coin, I think you'll buy enough distance to make lighting much easier. You have to be bare inches away from the coin for the huge images you're getting.

With that said - and this is kinda counterintuitive - adding a second light will go a long way towards solving the problem too. It'll force a much faster exposure, allow you to stop down for more depth of field, and allow the lowest-possible ISO for the greatest dynamic range (and therefore contrast). You can trade exposure length for the other two as long as you're not handholding - from a secure mount and with a timed shutter, look for f/8 and ISO100 at around 1/20 with the kit you're shooting. If you have enough light to do that, postprocessing will easily finish the job.

I apologize for not getting back to on the 82mm lens. It's OK. I actually believe that my old Pentax K1000 with a bayonet mount and any of the old 100mm+ (you screwed the bayonet fitting on to the filter ring and reversed the lens) lenses took better pictures (oh, completely manual photography BTW). I also prefer my microscope.