After some talk about digital microscopes in the ancient coins forum, I decided to take the plunge, and bought the cheaply priced ($80) Tomlov DM101 to try one out. I think the results are promising. Putting everything together took just a few minutes. First impressions were good. The camera is crisp and the images are high resolution. Using Mac Photo Booth, I can capture images or video. The adjustable light source is not great, and I doubt it will see much use. You can see the difference between 0, ~50, and 100% light in these photos. Not much of an issue, just plan on using your own lighting if you want to use this scope. The close-ups are quite impressive IMO. No optical zoom needed. Playing around, I was able to get some decent images. One complaint is that Photo Booth gives you a mirror image in the live view, so moving the coin around can be tricky, but the output images are correct if you have your Photo Booth settings right. I'm sure there is other camera software that will flip the image in live-view, so I'm not too concerned about that. The focus knob is not very responsive, which can hinder getting the right focus. And speaking of the right focus, the focal plane of the camera seems to be very small, and I don't feel like I'm simultaneously getting the high and low points of the coin in the best focus. Still, I feel this is more convenient than mounting my iPhone on a tripod, and I'm happy with the results for $80. I'm sure I will get a lot of use out of it.
Webcamoid seems to fix the flipped image issue, though I'm sure there are other packages out there. https://webcamoid.github.io
