GoldFinger1969

One of the reasons I've been active on the photo and camera threads and posts the last few days is I just took pictures of ALL my coins so I have a record for my own knowledge (while at a show or LCS)...for insurance purposes....and to catalog how they look. As it turned out, it also lets you go back and see if the coin has changed. And unfortunately, one of mine has.......it's an 1898 Morgan Silver Dollar MS64 PL. If you look closely, you can see the dark/black blotch at 9 PM. It could be toning, but if it is it's monochromatic only and black. I'm a bit teed off since I figured a coin that didn't tone or show other blemishes for 120 years was probably safe. I guess not. I can't believe I bought it like this but I have to check and see if I took pics of the coin years ago on an older smartphone.

Ditto with me, Hog. But the pics should be razor-sharp on the basic PHOTO default setting (don't use SINGLE TAKE or one of the other settings like SPORT, etc.). If they aren't, do check the lens to make sure it's not dirty (probably isn't). Clean out your cache and maybe re-start the phone. If that doesn't fix it, just shake the phone for 2-4 seconds and take a pic. Keep doing it until it sharpens. The camera actually took sharp pics of my coins or anything up-close to focus on...but not anything normal or far-away distance. It was clearly something with the auto-focus getting "stuck." There's a few photos or links out there if you search for "Samsung camera, blurry, shake solution."

Why is stacking so critical ? If you high-relief on 1 side, that's just as bad as doing it on 2 sides for stacking purposes, right ?

It should take crystal-clear photos. Make sure your anti-shake feature is activated. Take some simple photos with a mini-tripod or full-tripod to eliminate human error...pics should be razor-sharp. If they're not, something is wrong. Now....the Samsung smartphones S8/9/10 cameras have a glitch that I found out about just a few months ago....there's something that affects the AUTOFOCUS which makes the picture decidedly blurry. They look like photos taken with a camera from the 1970's at 640x480 pixel resolution, not 4000x2200 4K. I would take photos of the giant scoreboard at CitiField when attending a Mets game and I could easily see the scoreboard and read everything but when I took a picture of it, I couldn't make out the numbers or words. It was all blurry. The Samsung smartphones need to be gently SHAKEN to fix the problem. Yeah, I thought it was nuts too but that's what caused the problem in the first place: maybe it was dropped, rotated, moved quickly, juggled in your pocket, fell on the couch or car seat or lawn...whatever. But cleaning the lens and re-loading the camera app did NOT solve the problem nor did all the other fixes I came across. Finally, I found a website with a guy who had that as the fix and he admitted it sounded bogus -- BUT IT WORKED !!! When this happened in 2019-21, it would happen randomly 1 or 2 times a year and last a few days or a week or two. It was a real PITA because I couldn't use the phone to take pics. The problem fixed itself with some random shaking or movement of the phone but I didn't know that's what had done it. I just figured the phone "fixed itself" somehow maybe with a power-off or power-on or whatever. Nope...you actually have to deliberately SHAKE THE PHONE and then just take pics and see when it razor-sharps again. Once I found this hint, I did the shaking and the phone was razor-sharp again within 60 seconds instead of waiting days or weeks to accidentally jigger whatever came loose or moved.

Well, I guess they have more memory and probably larger/faster processors. They can probably do more things than a smartphone and faster, too. Especially with RAW photos and other data-intensive applications. I suspect that a digital camera also has longer and more powerful batteries...if you're going to be taking hundreds of pictures at a wedding or similar life event, you can't take a break to re-charge a smartphone. However...today's smartphone are probably where stand-alone digital cameras were 5-10 years ago. That's a pretty powerful technology to be included in a phone for free. Also, a real camera is ergonomically designed for human hands and eyes whereas a smartphone is geared for talking, texting, and maybe watching videos.

Is the Canon state-of-the-art and you had same resolution quality on both ? The more vibrant color (realistic, IMO) of the smartphone is clear....and the increased sharpness and detail seen in the smartphone pics is very clear to me. Look at the details on the smartphone pic on the neclace, the headdress coming over the left ear, or the feathers. The Canon looks like VHS-quality or DVD-quality while the S22+ looks like a Blu-Ray or 4K.

Agree with BSS.....unless you are going to get lots of usage out of the (digital) camera...and can utilize all the advanced features....you can get 95% or more of that with a smartphone which is probably as good as professional digital cameras were only 5-7 years ago. With the money saved, you can get yourself a super-nice coin ! You can buy a very inexpensive mini-tripod which makes taking the pictures easier and with hardly any shaking/vibrating. What I did was set my coin box up agains the back of my La-Z-Boy recliner....then I had the coin against the back of the chair resting on the coin box....then I pressed the smartphone flush against the forward part of the coin box to "brace" myself so I wasn't holding the phone in the air but against something. Helped eliminate some shaky photos and increased the consistency.

Not only that, but I believe that today's LCDs vs. CFLs vs. incandescents will all light a coin's surface area differently. Even if you correct for wattage/lumens.

But picture quality will be the same, right ? Let's say you crop a 1920x1080 Hi-Def picture....what remains will "shrink" to something like 974x585. It should be the same (give or take a miniscule number of pixels) whether you crop on the phone OR crop in Paint or something on your PC, right ? I know that digital zoom is not as good as optical zoom (right ?). So....let's say I have the choice of zooming in on a coin with the optical zoom to get a closeup....OR....moving the smartphone closer to get the closeup. Shouldn't be much different, right (with digital zoom, I believe it would be) ?

Eagle, what you are showing is I believe the Danbury Mint offer. Real Morgan Silver Dollars, but 50-100% overpriced last I checked, maybe more.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It's not so much for me.....my understanding was that LEGITIMATE bar codes could be used with alternative, fake coins in LEGITIMATE PCGS/NGC holders. Net-Net, you can't use a legitimate, real bar code for my Saint-Gaudens coin to pass off your copy which isn't real but might be 1 ounce of real gold with or without a "grade" in the front that matches mine holder.

Agree with WF.

I think in coin books it wouldn't be a bad idea to have an appendix listing the major changes and when they took place over a coin type's lifetime. Easier to focus on and remember, especially for non-experts.

Wow.....high-relief on 1 side ONLY ? Did any other coins ever deliberately have high-relief on 1-side only ? Did you mean "10% of 1877-S DEs" ? You mean the SanFran mintages ?

I didn't know that until reading the Bowers LH DE book a few days ago !! I couldn't believe it lasted that long....but I looked closely at the pics and it's clearly visible. Thanks, Sandon ! I'm still reading, so I'll make sure to look for your other changes/factoids later on as I read the chapters on Type 2's and Type 3's. It's one of the few Liberty DE-specific facts that the book deals with, as opposed to the Whitman Red Book on Double Eagles which goes into each yearly mintage. Come to think about it...I'm not even sure the Bowers DE Red Book went into that "Double L" thing nor the "Broken A crossbar" thing I read about in the LH DE book. Or if it was there, I forgot about it as it didn't stand out without pictures (the big advantage of the Bowers LH DE book and RWBs SG DE book).

If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have the MCMVII UHRs and HRs. And probably not the Saint-Gaudens DE, either.

I think the gap between what the average person has today vs. a pro has narrowed a ton. 40 years ago, I had one of those Instamatic cameras...my father had a Nikon 35 mm....and the pros had the Nikon or similar camera with all the huge lenses (wide-angle, telephoto, etc.). Today.....I see that serious photographers will have actual cameras with lens extensions....and maybe they can shoot in 8K or 16K or whatever....but the difference between those actaual cameras and what a state-of-the-art iPhone or Galaxy can do has to be much less than decades ago when comparing Joe Public and Joe Professional. If there are differences, I'm not sure the human eye can discern it !

Thanks BSS !! Can I also black-out the bar code from the phone; would make it easy not having to zoom in and crop the photo (from the phone or Paint) if I want to show the label and grade without the bar code.

Took these in my La-Z-Boy chair....LED light straight above with light angled down at the coin/chair....I had the Galaxy S9 about 6" away pressed against the box that the coins were set on to brace the camera. Sometimes I would zoom in at about 2-2.2x to eliminate the holder itself and just show coin. This is the 2013 Reverse Proof ASE; obverse is the 70, the reverse is from a 69.

How long have you had the S22+ ? I have a Galaxy S9 but am thinking of upgrading (I'm hoping it will help with a dropped-call problem I have at my home). Major negative is that the new Galaxies don't have the SD card slot which means you have to buy the extra memory internally which costs more. Can you describe what you did to crop etc. ? I want to see if I can do that on my S9.

2013 Enhanced ASE: Here's the Enhanced ASE that was pretty hot in 2013-14. I do like the finish. The reverse is actually an SP70, not that any of us could tell the difference.

Amazing....never heard about this, never read about it. You would think that the numismatic mags would be writing about this little unexplored area, huh ? Definitely interesting and a source for new often un-registered coins. Mini-hoards, if you will. Ironically....I attended the Parsippany, NJ show a few years ago and there was a dealer there who had 2 spectacular MCMVII HR's and some other very valuable rarities (from the mid-1800's) that a client or contact had given him to sell after they were found in some barn or farmhouse in Nebraska or something like that by the children or grandchildren who inherited the estate.

I already knew that....didn't you know that E Pluribus Unum means "We're Watching You" in Latin ?

Is that Eagle on the right Jewish ? Looks like he's wearing a yarmulke. Either that or he's angelic and has a halo over his head. Roger, please see if the Newman Portal can shed any light on this deep theological question.

Questions On Taking Best Picture: Just a couple of "dumb" questions that a photograhic novice (maybe, on my best day! ) wants to know. I use the default settings on my Galaxy S9 smartphone....I don't use any of the preset things like NIGHT or SPORT or whatever (should I ?) and use the default Photo function/settings with resolution set to max or near-max. After all, I am taking pictures of stationary coins, not football players jumping in action so I figure messing around with ISO or light variables or whatever is beyond my skill set OR need. Pictures are set to maximum resolution (4K quality ~ 4000x2300 pixels). One.......since these are simple coin photos, am I right to assume that any specialty settings are overkill and aren't going to make a dimes worth of difference ? Two......is there a DIFFERENCE if I zoom in a bit with the smartphone camera and THEN take the pic with more of a close-up/less background....OR....take it without any zoom (showing the coin and some background) and then use the close-up function on the phone itself or you people using the zoom feature on this site to make the image bigger ? In other words...is there any resolution or clarity lost by me initially zooming or is it even better if I do it first and then eliminate the need to zoom on the smartphone when I look at the pics or when you people see them ?