Microscopes for coin photos help

A good friend showed me a Dino-lite he got on e bay for $19. He showed me listings of them for sale on e bay. I already have one with no name on it and it works great on Windows. My opinion, more than 50x magnification is not necessary.

 

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Every time I see someone wanting a microscope for coin photography I wonder if the person REALLY needs that much magnification.
I can understand the need if the person is doing research on varieties and errors; sort of like what Richard Snow does with FE's and IHC's.
I keep thinking maybe I ought to get one but then I wonder how much use it would get and tell myself "no", use the money to get coins.

I've got a mid-range Nikon (D90) and a Nikkor 60mm macro lens.
That's what I use for coin photography.
I also use the camera with a general zoom lens (18-200) for vacation and personal shots.

I don't think I'll ever take the shot of a mint mark that would be screen size.
My D90 will do well enough.

 

Can any of y'all with digital microscopes recommend focus stacking software? (either free or licensed)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stacking

Wikipedia lists about 20 programs that will perform focus stacking. I'm just wondering if any software package is "better". And if anyone here has actual experience using any of those programs.

In this case "better" would be ease of use and able to produce sharper images.

Thanks!

 

Well it's not the mag it's the price. Not everybody can afford over 1000$ on a camera and lens to take a coin photo! Plus it's fun to use searching for errors.

 

Heck, I used a point and shoot Cannon for years, and got fairly decent photos. If you shoot with large file format you can still get some pretty awesome closeups when you crop the image in post production.

 

I use an Aven Digital 5.0 Mega Pixel Mighty Scope, 10x to 200x Magnification mounted on an Aven Mighty Scope Stand. This is tethered to my laptop via a USB cable. It is compatible with Windows XP and 7. The larger optional stand enables photographs of larger coins.

 

Poor Green....

Here.. I'll fix it for him: "Canon".

 

I think you left off a "0".

 

Sue me.......the 'n' key locks up sometimes. And I ain't gonna edit the post.

 

Oh no. You didn't buy it from Sears did you? I just bought a 5mp Celestron today for @ $100 at Sears and am also running Windows 7.

Here's the one I bought. I had a $25 off coupon and enough points to pay without cash. It'll be useless though if I have to have Windows 8.

http://www.sears.com/celestron-infi...lerId=SEARS&prdNo=12&blockNo=12&blockType=G12

 

NO - not the one I bought, Hope you have good luck. The pic resolution was not good and very hard to focus. This is the one that I purchased and was told by a Celestron technician that the software was compatible with Windows 8

 

$400 will set you up with everything you need to shoot the largest coin or smallest microscopic detail in professional quality far beyond anything a USB microscope is capable of.

If you wish to focus stack, use CombineZP for free or the more powerful Helicon Focus for pay.

 

Excellent to know

 

desertgem we may have to agree to disagree....

Megapixels has nothing to do with magnification. Megapixel is how we measure resolution, another term for resolution is size. For example a camera that takes a photo that measures 640x480 would be .3 megapixels, a photo that measures 1280x1024 would be 1.3 megapixels.

Comparing optical magnification in traditional and digital devices
Example 1: Magnification vs field of view in traditional and digital microscopes
The magnification value provided for Dino-Lite microscopes is intended to be useful as a reference to comparable magnification using a traditional microscope but may differ in some cases. A more useful measurement when comparing a digital microscope and a traditional microscope is the field of view (FOV) under a given magnification. This number represents a real dimension and does not change based on variations of monitor size, pixel dimensions, or resizing the software window.



In the image above a sample of the views from a compound microscope and a Dino-Lite are compared. Under this particular setup, the field of view at 40x with the compound microscope was approximately the same as the field of view using the Dino-Lite at 65x. Switching the Dino-Lite display in the software to full screen causes the image to appear larger or more magnified (digital zoom), but the field of view remains the same.

Example 2: Determining actual magnification in digital microscope devices
Due to the differences explained above, it is often more useful to compare field of view rather than magnification. If you have a requirement that you must work at a particular magnification level, you can compare the physical dimensions of the original item being magnified to the resulting size of the item on your display. For example, if the actual dimension of your item is 10mm you can compare that to the size of the item when displayed on your screen in the Dino-Lite software. Adjust the magnification on the Dino-Lite until the item occupies 100mm on your screen for an overall magnification of 10x.




Magnification is relative to the working distance.

 

Re. Focus Stacking: Thanks Dave.

 

I got a Dino-lite "entry level" model from Microscope.com (model AM2111) and can recommend it as functional and simple to use. You should ask if a combo deal is available on the scope/stand MS 35B(way over-engineered built but worth it) Their software works w/win7 and installs flawlessly most others DONT!

 

I have a Plugable 2.0 coming tomorrow that is supposed to be windows 7 compatible - if it ain't I will check out the Dino - thanks for the info!!

 

Thank

Thanks for that link - I bought one and works great. Easy to use. And I can't remember who wrote that this camera can't take full coin photos, just band the neck back to get farther away from your coin - scope takes a full pic even if it's barely pointed at the coin. Runs flawlessly on Windows 7 64 bit.