New camera - photo opinions wanted (big pic warning!)

spoon

I'm reshooting some coins with a new camera after almost 10 years away from collecting. I used to take pics with a cheap point & shoot. Now I have a cheap DLSR!

I still need to tweak the manual settings and adjust lighting - these new pics aren't great yet, but they're getting better - in some ways.

My question for y'all - which do you prefer style-wise?

The old pics used different lighting, different color balance, and some in-camera processing affecting color. They tend to show more detail in some areas, though that's likely due to the sloppy lighting on the new ones.

The new ones are shot on manual mode, no processing, but the lighting obscures some of the shimmer of fresh bronze around the devices - in addition to flattening some detail.

Color is what I really need to work on. The new ones are closer to accurate when the coins are casually viewed, though these veer more toward how they look under intense light. That said, outside of the bright lights, the coin does have hues of the first version. I'm having trouble picking that up with the DLSR.

All thoughts and advice welcome! Thanks!

2009:

2020:

2008:

2020:

2008:

2020:

YQQ

I believe your issue is the operator and White Balance and lighting and not the camera.

TwoKopeiki

Which DSLR? Are you able to set manual white balance? I definitely prefer photos #2. Are you using 3 lights now vs 2 previously? More even lighting in the new ones. Do you shoot raw and post-process in photoshop or light room? Have you tried playing with light angles?

spoon

Thanks! It's a Nikon D3500 tethered to my laptop via digiCamControl. White balance on this camera is a little tricky. I can set it as fluorescent or auto - each gets close, but not exactly to the temp of the lights (Jansjos x3). I haven't found the sweet spot tweaking in post yet. Still lots of work to do playing with other settings too, like F-stop (these are around f11), and placement of the lights!

Here's one with auto (left) vs fluorescent (right) and no other post-processing:

I kind of love playing with these nice but imperfect copper/bronzes. Really gives a lot of challenges to capture every detail right.