Coinbuf

And why I threw up my hands and gave up on several some time ago. It becomes a joyless endeavor where-in you almost feel like the mints are just trolling you and laughing at you all the way to the bank.

The 1943-S NGC MS67* CAC quarter that I purchased arrived in the mail earlier today.
The obverse looks to me like it was struck with a proof die; the surfaces are fully-reflective; not smooth-satiny like a fresh business strike.
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You're quite welcome.
As regards our competition over the 1940 mint set, rest not upon your laurels good sir, for you're next...
 

Nope, I always read it as casualties, never notice the misspelling. Definitely a great catch by Ali, but I have to agree with CB that a plaque with "causalities" forever etched would have been hilarious. 

Oh yes... Such fun...  But yeah... Once the initial "pain" wore off I'd have looked at it in later years and laughed.  

Great catch @Ali E.    However I cannot help but think what fun it would have been for you to have a forever plaque to commemorate the spelling.   

You have every right to be proud of your all your sets, they show the dedication and work that you (and now Shandy) have and are putting into the collection.   It is kind of sad to see the journal awards gone, I'm not much of a writer myself but have always enjoyed reading the journal entries posted by others.   I hope this will not cause folks to abandon the journals altogether, they add an extra and interesting dimension to the boards.

Definitely very proud of the sets and some aspects of the presentation, which is what is getting the nod - the pictures, the research and the journey. Thanks.  There's also some odd vindication in it.  One of the things that spurred me back into this in 2019 was one of the members here dismissing the Zimbabwean notes as "just big numbers" and I wanted to show that they were more and impressive and cool with a great story. It's funny to me that that annoyed me enough that three years later I still remember it and it has lead to back-to-back cross-registry wins. I had someone tell me once, "You really do not like being criticized - but you hear it, and then you take it and do something awesome."

You have every right to be proud of your all your sets, they show the dedication and work that you (and now Shandy) have and are putting into the collection.   It is kind of sad to see the journal awards gone, I'm not much of a writer myself but have always enjoyed reading the journal entries posted by others.   I hope this will not cause folks to abandon the journals altogether, they add an extra and interesting dimension to the boards.

...On another note, congratulations on your Lincoln Cent set award! Mark's photos of your cents look phenomenal in your winning set. Your set is truly pleasing to the eye and a testament to your eye in choosing coins with pleasing eye appeal. Your set is truly worthy of award and recognition!

Congrats!!  A cool set and I'm sure that you had fun putting it together, getting an award is just icing on top. 

Man, Mark does some great work, Coinbuf!! Like William said, those dark copper coins like that are quite difficult to photograph, but the photos Mark did are excellent!

Hopefully when you visited Fords theatre, you also stopped by the America History museum at the Smithsonian. 
Mark does a very nice job. I have his book and the basic set up for micro photography, but haven’t had the time to really delve into it. That is one of my New Years goals - take better photos. The problem is, I have many such goals and not enough …

A dark coin like that would be very hard to image well... He did a great job with it.

Yes f 5.6 is probably too low. 8 or 11 is probably minimum. I was talking to a coin photographer recently and he said he shoots almost exclusively at F 11. Wide open (say F-16) add other issues. Any extreme in the lens will open up another issue, albeit most things are able to be managed. But try going up an F stop or two. His coin photo looks like it used the other elements of the triangle (iso and shutter speed) as yours but an F stop or two up. And I still think he hit the saturation a little to get that toning to show a little more. 

Yup! I like it a lot. I just have to get the coins graded and then find a place to keep it. I like how the dark interior will offset the white slabs with the dark rings through the edge-view prongs with the current gen slabs. It should be a darn nice set of coins.

Thanks, that helps.   There are three important enough DDO's for this date/mm to receive an FS number, and several other very minor DDO's.   However when viewing your photos and the one available via the PCGS website I still only see MD, or strike doubling whichever term you prefer.
Also as you were the one that submitted this coin did you select variety attribution when you submitted the coin?   If you don't ask and pay for the variety attribution you will not get it.   If you did ask for and pay the extra fee then PCGS determined that you have simple MD and no variety, which is what I see also.

My recent efforts to re-image my 1986 mint set, and some others was done mostly using a ring light on a stand, behind and slightly to the side of the camera, with the coins angled relative to the axis of the lens just a little to get the luster to look nice. I'm pretty darn happy with these, though admittedly some of the final shots are nicer than others and the coin pops more in some than others. But ring lights are cheap, and this is easy to hammer through fast while still getting very solid results IMO.
 

I used to use 7.1-8 but had problems with parts of the coin looking soft or fuzzy, even with smaller coins, if the coin was angled at all. So I switched to 12-16 like woods, and set the camera up on the table or a tripod to use longer exposure times. Maybe that could help you too. Your mileage may vary though, of course.
Edited to add, you of course, don't owe me a response at all, timely or otherwise, especially during the holidays, so thanks for humoring my curiosity.

Very nice I have that same three tray case and it is a very nice display case.  

Thanks, that helps.   There are three important enough DDO's for this date/mm to receive an FS number, and several other very minor DDO's.   However when viewing your photos and the one available via the PCGS website I still only see MD, or strike doubling whichever term you prefer.
Also as you were the one that submitted this coin did you select variety attribution when you submitted the coin?   If you don't ask and pay for the variety attribution you will not get it.   If you did ask for and pay the extra fee then PCGS determined that you have simple MD and no variety, which is what I see also.

Well...first of all, these giant blow-ups without full photos of the obverse and reverse are not very helpful at all.  To properly examine a coin through photos, we need good, clear photos of the full coin to place the blowups into their proper context.  Going forward, if you want us to help you, please follow these guidelines:
1. Post clear, cropped photos of your coin, both obverse and reverse.  Any blowups need to be accompanied by these photos or they're useless.
2. Make sure you ask a clear, coherent question in a sentence or two.  Just saying a few words is often not very helpful.  Tell us what you think you have going on and what you want to know.
3. Post one coin per question/thread.  If you have additional coins, make separate threads/questions for each individual coin.  
4. You're likely to get more attention if you post your questions in the Newbie Coin Collecting Question area rather than in a Journal.  Doing this will increase your chances of getting help in a timely manner.
5. Remember that most of us on here are simply collectors who do this without being paid for it.  Most of us do not work for NGC and we are not paid by them to participate here and share knowledge.  As such, it may take time to get an answer and you may not get one at all if we don't have a member that knows the answer to your specific inquiry.  That does happen.  Please be patient with us.  
6.  Please read this thread.  It will tell you all you need to know to be successful here with posting inquiries:
https://boards.ngccoin.com/topic/415185-what-you-need-to-know-about-posting-coins-for-inquiry/
Also, please know that if you do not follow these guidelines, you will likely be ignored.  We do want to help you, so please help us help you.

Mark's Histogram:

Your Histogram

Your image is more like what I normally aim for because I don't like seeing the white core of the slab looking so dark when I know it's white, but I like to goose the histogram to get more of a full tonal range. This is something you should be able to do in Elements to a Jpeg (if you like it. You may not, but I think it helps things pop just a bit more).

If you're dialed in with the lighting and the exposure you don't really need RAW and Photoshop to get good images but it does help. I've never seen an image - of a coin or a person - that couldn't benefit from a bit of global editing.

Yours is pretty darn good as well. The difference in the two is probably largely in post processing. Have you bumped up your saturation a tad? His looks like it may have a little brilliance bump too. I could be wrong I am just starting coin photography myself. But I’ve been doing wildlife photography for a long time.