Some microscopic photos I took of the 1oz Gold Britannia

[MythicQuale]

Following on from my old thread where I asked if my gold coin was genuine, I finally received my Kickstarter phone-attachment microscope and have been able to delve into some of the details of the coin. All of these are genuine photos and not CGI!

First off a picture of the actual whole coin:

Here's a picture of Britannia's face:

 

And Elizabeth II on the other side:

 

Here's a nice photo which encompasses some of the security features of the coin, including the hologram where you can barely make out the trident, and also the teeny weeny text at the top middle - "DE":

 

Here's a close up of some of that tiny text:

 

 

 

 

And also a close up of that hologram:

 

I haven't exactly treated the coin with kid gloves (handling and ping tests with metal tweezers etc.), so there are some scratches and nicks evident:

 

Here's a close up of the '2' from the year 2021 written on the coin:

 

Here's a close up of part of the shield. I like the mottled effect surrounding it:

 

Here's a close up of that mottled effect background:

 

Finally, I couldn't resist zooming into the edge of the coin:

 

And a close up...

 

And zooming in again!!

 

And one last further zoom!!

Edited May 16, 2021 by MythicQuale

[BackyardBullion]

Holy moly, those are stunning photos!

Thanks for sharing!

[GoldDiggerDave]

Great photos mate, can you link me what you used?  

[MythicQuale]

Thanks both!

GoldDiggerDave, I used this Kickstarter product costing around £2400 in total.

Only kidding, I think I paid more like $56 for it haha (the quality is as much as microscopes costing 100x  the price according to the aforementioned site). You get two tiny lenses, one for close ups, and one for REALLY close ups. Both stick to the camera lens on your phone, no extra software needed (I just used my phone's camera). I love how I can free-style move the camera and see it on the relatively large phone screen in realtime at 30fps. You do need a steady hand for the close ups, and it's otherwise easy to make photos look blurred! Looks like this is their website, but I can't see a way to purchase it from there.

Edited May 16, 2021 by MythicQuale

[adamantio999]

Amazing. Great work. I wonder what kind of magnifying glass I would need to do the same with my quarter ounce 😆

[Paul]

[MythicQuale]

Fun fact 1: Many of the photos suffer from small depth of field focus blur (about 0.5mm DoF?), especially the last few. I wonder if it's possible to get a microscopic lens which has a depth of field of greater than say a centimetre.

Fun fact 2: The last image I displayed (also shown below), if it were a giant real life coin (assuming you have a 15" screen, and the image width covers 3/4ths of it, and then bring that size to reality), would be around 29cm thick, and 4.75 metres diameter (width of a large-ish lounge). It would have a volume of 5.1 cubic metres and would weigh 3.1 million troy ounces or 95,000 kilograms.

It would also be worth £4 billion according to today's gold prices (£1315 per troy ounce).

 

 

(only the top half (0.4 to be precise) of the thickness of the coin is shown here).

Edited May 17, 2021 by MythicQuale

[MrFreezerrr]

2 hours ago, MythicQuale said:

Fun fact 1: Many of the photos suffer from small depth of field focus blur (about 0.5mm DoF?), especially the last few. I wonder if it's possible to get a microscopic lens which has a depth of field of greater than say a centimetre.

No that’s not possible. Been working with macro lenses last 10 years (1:1 till 5:1)and the greater the magnification, the shallower the depth of field. I guess this is the same way at microscopic level. This is just the law of physics. However, some macro enthusiast use a method called ‘stacking’, taking hundreds/thousands of photos with each photo shifting their focuspoint (with small overlap) and then afterwards stitch them together in photoshop. This way more depth of field in a macro photo is forcefully created. It takes a lot of patience but there are some helping tools out there like computer automated sleds where you can put your lens on allowing it to shift the focus with very small increments each photo.

Edited May 17, 2021 by MrFreezerrr
Typo

[MythicQuale]

I like the sound of that. Almost as if the whole thing could be automated completely, if the camera takes thousands of photos at differing focal lengths.

As far as I understand, a pinhole camera/lens system could work, but less light is received into the device, so you'd need either very bright lighting or a mounted system, so it can improve the quality to a significant degree.

Maybe in the future though, we'll find better materials, either for the lens, or for the sensor, and then we can have our cake and eat it.

[MrFreezerrr]

A phone lens or cameralens are 2 different things offcourse. It’s compairing apples and oranges. But fact is, to bump up the depth of field in a macro shot, you will need a closed diafragma (high F-stop) but this results in a very dark image. Thus you will need lots of light or a flash. You can also higher the ISO a bit but this causes more grain in the photo; so less quality. I personally used a flash with DIY softboxes. People always looked weird when they saw me using flash in the middle of a sunny day but hey 😂