DIY smartphone microscope for bevels

[AlabasterA]

Man, I have that LED microscope and I still gotta make this!

 

[Chaloney]

I imagine if you turn on the iphone's flashlight LED illumination it will be fantastic.

Nice job!

i haven't played with it too much but when I tried it there was too much glare. I think the light is close enough to the camera that it reflects back off the top plastic piece of the stand. I may try putting a piece of paper over the light to hopefully reduce glare and act as a diffuser. The picture quality depends a lot on ambient light--quantity and direction. When I first set up the stand for the picture in my earlier post it was rotated about 60 degrees counterclockwise from where I ended up. I was in my bathroom at night so it was lit from fixtures above the mirror and from the reflection of that light in the mirror. I focused then gently rotated the whole contraption until the lighting looked good. Our bathroom is pretty brightly lit and the image was still somewhat dark. I think daylight will work better than anything

 

[rajagra]

You could mount some LEDs around where the lens is installed. Might not be pretty with the wiring, but you could achieve a pretty good ringlight effect.

OR ... put a white finish on the bottom of the plexiglass around the lens. Shine a light up onto the white area. (Will probably need to shield the lens from the light.)

A really fancy solution would be to have light reflecting internally in the plexiglass, rather like those illuminated page readers*.

EDIT> *Lightwedge is the type I'm thinking of. There seem to be cheap knockoff versions on ebay. You could even make one of these the top part of the structure. Also possibly scuff up some of the bottom surface to diffuse light?