Have you tried using a polarizing filter on your lens. I find it can remove some of the reflection off the gold.
Also, (don't know if you do this,), but you can go into a program like Microsoft Live Photo Gallery and under fine tuning you can adjust highlights and shadows (in the adjust exposure category)
Thanks for the advice. I'll try get a polarising filter.
I use a relatively simple photo editor but it does include adjustment of exposure, colour saturation, individual colours, brightness, contrast, and many other
tools. From my experience taking thousands of coin photos, it is often more effective just to take a half-dozen photos under different lighting conditions and lighting angles (which can be done in less than a minute) and choose the best, rather than spending 15 minutes trying to optimise conditions for 1 picture.
Lovely
solidus. I would bet from the photo that the dealer has an automated set-up such as a Danner apparatus (which do not come
cheap). As mentioned frequently on-list, I am a volume rather than a
quality photographer, often shooting hundreds of coins in a day, so don't have the time to optimise per-coin. These goldies however have persistently caused me difficulty.