Middle Date Large Cents imaged

There have been a few posts about digital microscopes or requests for info on such beasts. As readers of my posts know, I purchased a Dino-Lite AM-413T at the Pittsburgh ANA show in October. I still have not had a lot of time to play, but I did take a decent set of shots of my middle date large cents.

Those images are now in the registry. Please check out the gallery for that set and see what you think. I used one natural light Ott light, and the Dino-Lite's built-in LEDs off. As a result, you get some idea of the cartwheel luster. But when the luster is particularly good, a coin that is more-or-less uniform in color does not really look like it. See some of the RB coins from the 1830s in my set to see what I mean.

You may also notice that the NGC coins tend to look better than the PCGS coins. This has to do with the holders. I started with the 1816 cent, and got it to look reasonably good. It is in an NGC slab. After that, I just went through the rest of the set without adjusting anything. Because the NGC inserts are opaque white and the PCGS inserts are translucent, showing the black background I used, the light balance between coin and background was different for NGC and PCGS slabbed coins. The images are cropped to 512x512 from 1280x1024 originals. So the coins are about 16% of the original frame. I don't know how big an area the sensor was actually seeing. I would not be hard to make a white mask to use with PCGS slabs to hide the dark background.

I do have a couple issues with my Dino-Lite. The magnification adjustment is labeled from 20x to 220x, but will move beyond those limits by 10x or so at both ends. I've been able to achieve reasonable focus only near or beyond those marked limits. The lower magnifications can be focused from very close to the coin out to the two foot limit of my stand. The high magnification can only be focused very close to the coin. Aside from that, I cannot seem to get the entire coin in good focus at any distance. But it isn't too bad with the coin taking 16% of the image size.

Taking photos of slabbed coins pretty much requires face-on shots to avoid getting unwanted reflections off the slabs. I suppose that a careful setup could minimize any unwanted reflections. But face-on shots are desirable anyway, as there's no foreshortening that way. However, with a face-on shot, you cannot use the built-in LEDs, which would reflect right back into the microscope.

I still have to try silver and gold coins, and proof coins.

I have not yet tried the measurement feature.

I'll post more as I get time.