I got a new camera phone. It’s orange!
It was hellishly expensive, but my old phone lasted six years and I hope this one does as well. Even though the tech is generations beyond my old phone, the feature of this one I’m enjoying the most is the macro camera, since my old phone didn’t have one.
That’s a mini Chupa Chup. The photos above are unretouched, and presented in the same size they were captured.
A Lego piece. It looks a bit translucent when viewed using the macro lens, but it’s impressive how smooth the plastic is.
An Australian dollar coin, specifically the honeybee one from a few years ago. The detail on the bee and flowers is almost invisible with the naked eye, and I’m impressed they can mint them at this resolution! You can also see how some of the paint has scraped off, probably due to rubbing against other coins.
These photos are difficult to take since I don’t have a tripod and you have to both provide a lot of light and hold the phone very still! That’s a pill I was prescribed for my hands. I haven’t taken one yet 🙂
There’s an anti-counterfeiting test used on magic cards used called the ‘green dot test’ which traditionally required a jewelers loupe to do. The macro on this phone makes the test possible without one.
Speaking of trading cards, isn’t it interesting that the foil effect on this Waifu card is pixelated?!? I wonder why…
This diecast metal Zoffy figure is only 2 inches tall and one of my favourite possessions. When magnified using the macro lens we can see the paint application is precise, even with sub-millimeter lines.
Here’s a cloisonné pin, which is about 1 cm wide. You can see the paint has wicked up the edges. I wonder how they make these?
A Fantastic Four comic from 1976. Is the pink bleeding into her right eye an error by the colourer or the printer? Did they even notice?
A d20 from our youth. This came in our Dungeons & Dragons ‘red box’ and was from the era where the dice came with crayon to fill in the numbers. Yes, that white gunk is crayon I applied over 40 years ago! The die surface is very pitted, probably from having been rolled countless times over the years.
A dorito. Don’t they look delicious?
And last but not least an amethyst. The flat surfaces are easily visible with the naked eye, but even in macro you’ll see they continue to be extremely – nearly perfectly – flat. This reminds me that I’ve long been thinking about doing a blog post on ‘flatness’…
The orange of my phone is now hidden in a case, and I think it looks cool. As I was preparing this post I noticed the photos app now includes an AI option to remove items and I used it on the above photo. Can you see where something was removed?
