Lumin App

Lumin has been out for awhile but I only recently discovered how useful it can be.

Lumin is an electronic magnifying glass that uses the iPhone camera. I've used it a couple of times when I needed a close look at something while not at home. When I am at home, I have a jewelers loupe a retina-quality display.1

Here's the tip of my Adonit Jot snapped with Lumin.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter was playing with a reflector rod used to mark my drive way. It helps the snow plows know exactly where they can do the most damage to my yard. Little did I know, the rods are made out of fiberglass. My daughter ended up with several fiberglass splinters in her hand and I ended up being a jerk.

The jewelers loupe was useless for finding them. I was running out of options to demonstrate my super-human daddy skills. I grabbed my iPhone and opened Lumin. It was worth a shot. It worked, but not just becuase of the magnification.

The iPhone camera picked up the light reflecting off of the splinters and showed them as tiny bright-white dots in the image.2 I'm guessing this is an artifact of the sensor technology, but I'll leave that for a Dr. Drang post.

I could not remove the splinters with tweezers, but Daddy's utility belt always has the right tools. Gorilla tape to the rescue.

I'm back on my temporary pedestal.


  1. wink, wink, nudge, nudge. 

  2. Lumin easily allows the flash to be used as a flashlight while viewing.