Cell phone Photography- Post a picture of a coin taken with a cell phone.

Torey · July 11, 2024 8:06PM

I am curious how many people use their cell to take coin pictures. Years ago, I hired a professional photographer to image about 200 of my toned morgan dollars. Super nice lady but the images were terrible. I then went on to purchase my own expensive camera and received a lesson in awful picture-taking myself, I was pretty peeved at that point.

I decided to try and learn this skill the best I could. I read books and watched what felt like every video on YouTube. When I went to apply my newly found knowledge, I quickly came to realize (like most do) that it wasn't about how expensive your camera was. It was ALL about the lighting, and my cell phone could do the job just fine for what I needed.

Now I can admit this image has its downfalls, definitely a little out of focus but I spent maybe 15 seconds on it (for a weekly Ebay auction).

I still have tons to learn and would take any advice or tips given.

Post your phone shots, I would love to see them!

lermish · July 11, 2024 8:23PM

Copperindian · July 11, 2024 8:28PM

Here’s one:

1864 Br S-11 Lathe Lines PCGS 65RD

DisneyFan · July 11, 2024 8:35PM

@Torey said:

I'm seeing similar toning develop on my PCGS $1 Eagles. What's causing it?

bsshog40 · July 11, 2024 8:42PM

Took this with my Samsung S22 Ultra.

Mr_Spud · July 11, 2024 8:50PM

Here’s a few that I took with my iPhone 12pro

And here’s some close-ups taken with a macro lens added to the iPhone

ifthevamzarockin · July 11, 2024 8:54PM

A 5 year old with a box of Crayons could draw a better picture than I can take with my cell phone, I have an old flip phone.

braddick · July 11, 2024 9:02PM

I thought this bill came out pretty decent using my iPhone:

OAKSTAR · July 12, 2024 2:00PM

TennesseeDave · July 12, 2024 3:21PM

IPhone XS-Max

scubafuel · July 12, 2024 3:43PM

@MrSpud those are wonderful! Could you give us a quick forum lesson?

Goldbully · July 12, 2024 3:58PM

CRHer700 · July 12, 2024 7:35PM

I take 99% of the photos that I share on this forum with an IPod 7 since I lack a nice camera or lighting setup. It takes much better pictures than any other phone I have tried.

Walkerguy21D · July 12, 2024 7:41PM

@scubafuel said:
@MrSpud those are wonderful! Could you give us a quick forum lesson?

They rival or exceed the current TrueViews, imo…

PhilArnold · July 12, 2024 8:03PM

As assortment of stuff coin related taken years ago on my old iPhone 6s.

SanctionII · July 12, 2024 8:51PM

Just taken.

Mr_Spud · July 12, 2024 10:02PM

@scubafuel said:
@MrSpud those are wonderful! Could you give us a quick forum lesson?

Thanks. I went through a learning curve in 2020 when my wife bought me the IPhone 12 Pro by bringing all my old slabbed coins home from the safety deposit box and taking pictures of just about all of them. Most didn’t have Trueviews and were purchased about 20 years ago. The first 1/3 or so don’t look as good as the ones in this thread and even these ones start to pixelate out some if blown up bigger than the side by side images I posted. But through trialand error, for larger coins or even smaller coins in PCGS holders, here is my setup I used:

That’s a clear plastic 250cc pill bottle that I have the phone sitting on in place of a copy stand, set the timer on the phone for 10 seconds so the phone doesn’t shake when you press the button to take the picture, and I let the autofocus do its thing. I have those cheap led lights with goosenecks right next to or slightly above the phone camera lens, and you bend and tilt them and move them up and down til it lights up the coin similar to how most Trueview images did and press the button with the timer on.

One important thing I discovered when trying out the “oil drop” trick to make scratched slabs temporarily not look scratched is that the oil drops also made the slab glare invisible to the camera and the focus gets better because the camera only sees the coin and not the slab. So I did the 2nd 2/3 or so of the coins with the oil drops on the slab even when the slab wasn’t scratched. It also allowed me to have the LED lights closer to the camera lens without making reflections, it bends the light reflection around the perimeter of the oil drops rather than reflecting on the slab right on top of the coin. Like this, that’s the uncropped images and you can see the light reflection bending around the perimeter of the oil drop that I placed on the slab over the coin.

Here’s the cropped image trueview style

I use optically clear compass oil that is a type of isoparrafin (slowly volatile mineral oil). I like it because it’s super clear and because I blot it up with a paper towel and any residue evaporates because it’s volatile. But others use regular mineral oil, vegetable oil or even WD40 and get similar results. I use this type of compass oil and am still on the first bottle

For smaller coins, especially in NGC slabs, I had to use an app that allows manual focusing (Camera+) because the autofocus sees the slab insert too easily around the small coins. I also use this small scizzor jack that allows me to further fine tune the manual focusing similar to using an old fashioned stage microscope by turning the thumbscrew on the scizzor jack. I use the scizzor jack in place of the plastic bottle like it’s a copy stand

That’s the basics. I use an app called Xircle that does nothing but crop images into circles on all my images, trueviews too, to standardize them. Like this

Here’s a collage I made that’s a mix of trueviews and iPhone images along with some auction images if they had a similar style. This is my circulated slabbed type set and I standardized the images with Xircle and this is really just a screenshot of thumbnail images of the coins

emeraldATV · July 13, 2024 3:20AM

johnhenry9009 · July 13, 2024 3:31AM

1northcoin · July 13, 2024 3:41AM

Your point is well taken. Often I get a better result with my cell phone than with my SLR Camera. Here is an example from last month with a photography effort within China's Forbidden City in Beijing:

Photo taken with SLR in automatic settings mode:

Photo taken with iPhone Camera:

OAKSTAR · July 13, 2024 5:55AM

Hold on a minute, my phone ran out of film.

emeraldATV · July 13, 2024 7:15AM

@OAKSTAR said:
Hold on a minute, my phone ran out of film.

Just swipe it .
Film is free someone once told me.

scubafuel · July 13, 2024 8:13AM

@Mr_Spud Thanks so much for that tutorial. I’m really looking forward to trying your techniques, especially using an oil drop to remove some of the glare.
Results will follow once I’ve had time to experiment.