Patent ID: 8115831

Claim:
A lighting system for a portable camera, the camera functioning to magnify an object residing in an image plane, the lighting system comprising: an optical chamber adapted to be positioned over the image plane, the optical chamber having a lightly colored internal surface for promoting light reflection, the internal surface including a curved wall, an angled wall and two side walls therebetween, a mirror positioned upon the angled wall for reflecting the image of the object residing in the image plane; a CMOS image sensor positioned within the optical chamber opposite the mirror so as to record the image reflected by the mirror, the output of the image sensor being provided to an output screen by way of a field programmable gate array; a row of light emitting diodes positioned upon each of the side walls of the optical chamber, a light guide with upper and lower surfaces positioned over each row of light emitting diodes, the lower surface being parallel to the image plane and the upper surface being angled with respect to the image plane, the light guides functioning to help control the amount of direct and indirect lighting received by the object, whereby the light guides causes more indirect lighting when the image plane is in close proximity to the optical chamber and more direct lighting when the image plane is further away from the optical chamber.