Which Images do You like Better?

Never would have guessed proof like from the photos. So yes you need to try again - maybe somehow show how a PL coin's fields reflect. Just don't ask me how to do that.

 

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Late to the party as usual...

I like the overall color of the first set, but the lights were too high and caused some glare on the slab, reducing contrast. Given that you were trying to capture the PL character it makes sense you pulled the lights way up, but it was counter-productive.

Regarding the aperture question, if you plan to publish at the small size in this thread, then you can afford to go to f8 or maybe even f11 to get better DOF. A little-known benefit of narrow apertures is better "deep color" rendering and freedom from slab glare. Figure your DLA is f7, so if you downsize by 4x you can operate up to f28 and still be diffraction-limited. So up to f11 at 1:1 should still work fine, and will give great DOF as well as improved glare control. Just don't expect to see sharp details when you pixel peep or crop.