Coin photography with an iPhone

[Overlord]

The CD spindle proved too small for Catherine the Great's massive 5 Kopek. A 15 lb macebell was an apt substitute! Will photograph it tomorrow as the daylight has faded.



Edit: Worked pretty well. 

[Figleaf]

Needing light to come in at an angle, I used a white light torch to illuminate a copper coin. It came out blue. No amount of colour juggling could make it look like the original. In desperation, I turned the picture to greyscale mode. That resulted in the feared inversion effect: what is raised looks intaglio and vice versa. I got around that by colour inversion before going to greyscale. Lots of work, unsatisfactory result.

Peter

[Overlord]

Try indirect sunlight, or "filtered" direct sunlight. You can use your palm to partly block sunlight in a way that gives the desired results.

My coin photography is now exclusively restricted to the iPhone. I need no post-processing apart from cropping the photo (on the iPhone iteself) and am able to upload it using the Photobucket app. The result is not as good as what you can achieve with a proper camera and lighting, but not bad either. It frees me from bulky cameras, tripods, memory cards, laptops, and post-processing software.

[Figleaf]

Yes, I use filtering as well as putting the coin at angle. I like to filter with one or more sheets of paper as necessary. I was just reporting that for the iPhone camera even white light is no good. Use natural light only.

I still use the scanner a lot. It is perfect for flat, clear coins. I use the iPhone for high relief coins, objects with a significant third dimension, glossy items, weak strikes and "see-through" plastic tokens. All the really difficult stuff.

The iPhone pics come out too heavy for WoC. There may be setting to fix that, but it'll forget to set it back. Instead, I use the opportunity to tweak them with lossy jpeg - often losing 80% of size without a visible effect on quality, a precision crop and juggling with contrast and lighting as necessary.

I am very happy indeed with the results. Anyone with a smart phone can do this.

Peter

[Overlord]

The iPhone pics come out too heavy for WoC. There may be setting to fix that, but it'll forget to set it back.

Peter

I think there are free apps/websites that allow you to reduce image size. I use Photobucket so never really used one.

For me, the phone method doesn't work well for tiny coins, as the resulting image is often too small after cropping. For such coins, the extra megapixels of a regular camera come in handy.

[Levantiner]

I think there are free apps/websites that allow you to reduce image size. I use Photobucket so never really used one.

For me, the phone method doesn't work well for tiny coins, as the resulting image is often too small after cropping. For such coins, the extra megapixels of a regular camera come in handy.

I have seen on other forums people rave about theire smart phone coin pictures.  I view online coin pictures with a calibrated ( re- calibrated every month)  4 K monitor,  with such a monitor Smart phone pictures do not impress.   

[Hitesh]

I am not able to see any of the images is this post. Anyone else facing the same issues?

[Figleaf]

See this thread. It will take time to repair the damage.

Peter

[Overlord]

My trick for fixing broken Photobucket links seems to have worked! 

[Bimat]

How did you do this?

Aditya

[Bimat]

Just saw your post in another topic...Thanks! 

Aditya

[Pellinore]

Works great, Overlord. I used two whiskey glasses as a stand and late afternoon sunlight, with my desktop as backdrop. The glasses are the same size, so they provide a completely stable support for the iPhone, plus they are translucent. Siri took me to the camera, but I couldn't get it to take the picture. However, the iPhone was so stable I could use the shutter button (I never use the earphones, don't know where they are).

Adjusted size, colour and saturation, cut away superfluous background and lowered resolution with Graphic Converter on a Mac. This coin was impossible to scan correctly, but with the whiskey glasses stand I now see more on the picture than on the coin. Wait till Bushan sees this. Maybe I can even convince my wife I need the whiskey in the glasses for a colour effect

Peter

This intrigued me. With a whiskey glass you mean (I suppose) a water glass made of crystal with a flat bottom? I wonder if you can make a picture of your photo stand so I understand it with my vision?
I don't have crystal whiskey glasses (it certainly doesn't work with wine glasses), but is it something like this? I tried to do it with ordinary glasses, but they distort the picture.
-- Paul

[malj1]

I tried it using Samsung Galaxy + coffee mug + postit notepad

...used camera zoom to fit to screen.

Then voice command to take image. (smile)

No editing except to compress files.

[Figleaf]

My setup is very similar to malj1's. I haven't managed voice commands and I use glass to reduce light and shadow effects, but that's probably marginal anyway. If you consider the light too harsh, just hold up your hand or a sheet of paper to control it. The phone gives you instant feedback on how you affect the light. This is by far the easiest way to take sharp pictures of coins.

Peter

[bububoy]

will this work for coins with shiny surface.. like a gold coin or a copper proof coin ?

regards,

mahe