Extreme High Resolution Coin Scans

I am a computer geek, a media geek, and quickly becoming a coin geek. I purchased a cheap USB microscope and after a few snapshots, I had an Idea. Highresolution images are taken of paintings by using a digital camera to take 1000s of photos and very expensive software stitches them together. The result is a digital image that can be zoomed in to the brush stroke. My fascination with coins is not keeping them it's just holding and documenting the history behind them. My idea was to use this cheap USB microscope and do the same for coins. Thus creating the image below. Not bad for my first attempt.


Follow the link below to see the uncompressed composition.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ylwuj06ooeq28yt/1916%20wheat%20penny.tif?dl=0

Honestly it's a waste of time. I rather you buy a cheap camera with a Marco lens like olympus omd em5 and take them with a tripod and proper lighting. The most it would only take a space at the desk.

Those microscope camera the iso are too harsh to make what is out of it. That is my own view or opinion. I use a hua wei to take a photo of all my coin edges in Marco mode and find it very good. But I lack the lighting skills. In digital photography what I hate the most is the colour. Sometimes it is very accurate to the coin colour. Sometimes it's either abit warm or too cool.

Quote: "Lokerin"​I am a computer geek, a media geek, and quickly becoming a coin geek. I purchased a cheap USB microscope and after a few snapshots, I had an Idea. Highresolution images are taken of paintings by using a digital camera to take 1000s of photos and very expensive software stitches them together. The result is a digital image that can be zoomed in to the brush stroke. My fascination with coins is not keeping them it's just holding and documenting the history behind them. My idea was to use this cheap USB microscope and do the same for coins. Thus creating the image below. Not bad for my first attempt.
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​Follow the link below to see the uncompressed composition.
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​https://www.dropbox.com/s/ylwuj06ooeq28yt/1916%20wheat%20penny.tif?dl=0

​I find this very interesting. What software did you use for the composition? Was it done automatically or manually?

Thanks,
Aaron

Would be fun to look at some coin in a similar fashion to Google Earth.
I made some pictures with a microscope for micro elements of the 500 yen coin (at ~60x magnification) unfortunately there were also some on the other side which I didn't looked at.
The whole coin would be a very big picture

Hi. So I just found this thread/forum and I just have to comment because this is exactly what I do. Example:





The final image is a LOT bigger than this (400 megapixels), and was made with 1096 overlapping images from a 1 megapixel USB microscope (a really good commercial one, though you can also get pretty decent quality with a cheapo). Instead of being moved by hand, it uses basically just a 3D printer to move the scope around. Stitching was done quite painlessly in Microsoft image composite editor.

It can also act as a 3D scanner...! You can find more info if you google "Ladybug microscope scanner" or "Ladybug Beefy".

I'm sorry to say I'm not much of a numismat, but I'd love to hear if this is something anyone in your hobby might actually want/need!

Cheers,

Wayne