@Micheal: Thank you, and thanks for making such a enjoyable program.
@Ash: Yeah it is a little dark. I am trying to get the hang of Carrara. Are you the same ash on Polyloop? I may be asking advice from you there. (nudge-nudge)
@Marc: funny you should say that. That's what I do for a living. I design helmets all day long.
You can also get some good tips from looking at photography lighting tutorials. For your model google photo product shot lighting and also 3d product shot lighting. I play around a lot with lighting, lots of tweaking and rendering and tweaking and rendering and ....well you get the idea ;-).
Try adjusting the levels or curves, depending on what options you have available in your image editor. I usually tweak a render in Photoshop a little bit to get a sharp punchy pic.
Is the black material supposed to be a soft grip rubber? The reason I ask is a lot of the great contours you have there are lacking definition because of the lack of specular. Maybe try to apply some noise in your bump channel that is really small scale and intensity. Then increase your highlight value slightly(20-30) and reduce your shininess value(2-5) that should let you pick up some edge highlighting but still make it look like soft rubber.