Photographing small objects

[GRIM]

Here is something I discovered recently,
It consists of a type of jewelers Lupe, scotch taped to a webcam, it reduces the focal length to something like 1 ½”, allowing one to inspect / photograph / video small things,


Useful for those that don’t have an expensive camera with macro, or if like me your eyesight is not as good as it used to be,

For example, the holes in the hypo needles, silver soldered into the end of the 3/16” 3 point injector here are less than 0.5 mm diameter,

Don’t take too much notice of the measuring scale, it only Works correctly if the device is perfectly flat against the part to be measured,

[tufty]

A much easier* way involves buying a cheap-as-chips 50mm lens for a 35mm film SLR. You should be able to find one in a junk shop.

Next up, turn on your digital camera, and set it to maximum zoom. If you have a focus control, set it to infinity.

Take your 50mm lens, set it to infinity focus and maximum aperture, then place it, *reversed*, butted up against your digicam lens. Move camera in and out until you get focus on your object. Depth of field will be very shallow, but the results are very good.

Here's a couple I just did, no setup, didn't even bother cleaning the lens.




full size etc at http://flickr.com/photos/28888140@N04/

* okay, perhaps not easier (although it would probably work with your webcam approach as well), but certainly higher quality - the ball pen image above is a 0.1mm tip, and the full size image is 6 megapixels - cropped to 640x480, I can't get all of the "golden" part in frame.

[GRIM]

Hey tufty , thats even better , I forgot all about that old SLR camera I have in a box in the attic , i think , and as i recall it even had macro , thanks