The day I stop learning or wanting to learn is the day I need to do something else.

I have enjoyed the many responses to my last post about an 1870 half-dime I recently purchased. I particularly liked the comments concerning the photographs I took of the coin. That said, I want to personally thank users wdrop, Walkerfan, and RWB for their input.

There are many people on these boards whose opinions and experience I greatly respect. If they say people listen when EF Hutton speaks, I listen when the users on the Collectors Society boards speak.

For one reason or another I have had a devil of a time photographing this coin. Listening to the users I already mentioned, I began to think that I could do better. With that I went to my old 5000 kelvin lamps and adjusted my white balance accordingly. I previously had my lights at a low angle relative to the coin. In the past I have had success with the lighting at this angle but not this time.

This time I set both lights so that they pointed as straight to the coin as possible. This literally bathed my coin with light and I had to set my f-stop one step up from the previous setting of f4.5 to f5.6 and my ISO back to 100 from ISO 200.

I must say that the results are phenomenal as the natural colors popped while at the same time the contrast remained sharp. I hope you like the latest version I am posting and I want to admonish you all, no matter what it is, to keep learning!

Gary

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