Emergency iPhone Photography

An iPhone can take decent numismatic photos, but it can benefit from a bit of help. If you are serious about taking photos with an iPhone, you probably have a tripod and some sort of light box to get good results.

For example, this rig looks impressive:

But what do you do when you don't have a setup like that available? You are at a show or somewhere else and you want a good photo of a coin?

The biggest problem with an iPhone is motion. You can solve that with a few books and a rubber band:

The books raise the phone up enough to let light get to the coin and the rubber band helps stabilize the phone so that all you need to do is zoom to fit and press the button.

You can even get more magnification with another rubber band and a loupe:

Taken through a loupe with LEDs

A higher powered loupe could certainly do better if you can get light in or aren't bothered by LED lighting. Lighting does become more of a problem with the loupe because you have to be so much closer.  I used the LED lights on my loupe for the picture above.

The LED's do affect color, though, so is there any other way around that?  There may be: this Cortex Camera app is supposed to help with both low light and motion blur.

How does it do that? By taking multiple exposures and processing them into one.  This explains in more detail.

Does it work?  Well, I'm not really sure.  I've tried it in side by side comparisons and I can't see much difference - can you?

 iPhone Camera Flash on

 iPhone Camera Flash off

With CortexCam

For my needs, I'd rather be higher up with no loupe and use the iPhone zoom to get the magnification. It's not quite as sharp, of course.

iPhone zoom

Note:  All my coins are in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

Contests and giveaways: http://coins.aplawrence.com/2014/05/contests-and-giveaways.html

AGPtek® USB 800X Digital Microscope

Strictly speaking, few of us really need a microscope to examine our coins. A 7x loupe is enough magnification for almost anything you need to see.  That said, a microscope can certainly make examining details easier and it especially makes taking digital pictures easier.

A really good digital microscope can cost hundreds of dollars. I cheaped out and bought a 
$39 model at Amazon.

The reason I picked that one is that it was inexpensive and it has Mac software.  I have Windows XP and Windows 8 installed in Parallels Desktop on my Mac, but I'd rather not have to run those if I don't have to.

Setup was easy enough: plug it into a USB port, install the software and I was able to take this:

That's 20X magnification.  I had to get the picture using Skitch (a Mac screen capture tool) because neither the red photo button on the camera nor the software photo button worked. That's fine; I'd rather use Skitch anyway.

You adjust magnification using a rather stiff thumbwheel. Supposedly you can get anywhere from 20x to 800x, but Amazon reviewers say it really is only 100x maximum.

I could not get focus anywhere but at the bottom or the top of that range. This is what I got at the high end.  Whether that is 100x or 800x or something in between, it is more than enough for my needs.

The microscope includes LED lights that turn on by a switch on the unit.  The instructions warn you not to turn on the lights unless their software is already running - they don't explain what might happen if you are careless, but they do mention "electronic damage".

I'm happy with this purchase, though I'd prefer something easier to focus.

Note:  All my coins are in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

Contests and giveaways: http://coins.aplawrence.com/2014/05/contests-and-giveaways.html