Cell Phone Coin Photography

I’m an ancient coin collector…, and I’m also a photographer.

 - First, clean your coin with a soft-hair brush, then blow off any residue.  If you don’t, dust will be very evident in your coin photos.

 - Don’t take photos at night or with artificial lighting.  Use even illumination like that from a daytime window (cloudy or sunny but no direct sun).

 - Under no circumstances should you hand-hold the camera or the coin, for a photo.  Coins require close-ups which greatly reduces the depth-of-field (the distance range where a coin remains in focus).  This depth-of-field is often less than 1mm!  A closeup also magnifies your hand-shaking.  Again, you can not handhold a coin for this.  Instead, lay the cell phone horizontally on some books (or other items) such that the camera lens hangs over the edge of the books towards the coin below.  See the cell phone setup photo below.

 - Place the height of the phone so that it is as close to the coin as you can get it, such that it will still focus sharply at that close distance.

 - Center and enlarge the coin so that it fills the phone’s screen.

 - Gently tap the image of the coin on the phone’s screen.  This forces the camera to re-focus on the coin.

 - When ready, gently tap the shutter to take the photo.  If your phone has this feature use a time delay of a few seconds to avoid vibration.

 - Examine the finished photo by enlarging it.  If it doesn’t look right, learn what’s wrong and re-shoot until it looks good.

As an experiment, I took two coin photos, one with a black background and the other with a white one, both using my six-year-old phone.  Check the results below. The difference in the appearance of the photos is rather significant. This is because of how the camera’s light meter reacts to the coin’s black or white background. Though both are good photos more coin detail and better color balance are achieved when a coin is photographed with a black background (the darker the better). A dark background also removes any coin shadows at its edges.