Fine pitch trace repair

They wanted $10 for one of those at a yard sale, but I didn't want it that much :-(

If you can hold a jeweler's loupe over the camera with two fingers while you operate the phone/camera with whatever other fingers are available, you can get a pretty good shot.

Left is a 14x ophthalmologist's magnifying lens. Right is a 8x jeweler's loupe. Motorola Mogo G5plus.

The ophthoglasses are really expensive. This one was $125 used somewhere on line. A used 20D is $250. I got it for a buck at a yard sale.

It really gripes me that the camera is too far from the edge to permit use of those cute little clip-on lenses you can get on ebay. I had some for a previous camera, and you really need to use a tripod with the macro lens and the field of view is really tiny.

For the most part I look at the screen and not my hands or the keyboard. I am not that much of a touch typist. I can do the letters and a few common punctuations,but have to look for some of the other symbles. I never look at the mouse once I find it and get it in my hand.

Yes, it is the Amscope SE400Z. I think the last letter tells what lenses come with it. Mine came with a 10x and 20x lense. I almost always use the 10x lense. I bought a 5x but found the one i got did not seem to have a large a field of view as the 10x.

I don't have any problem at all looking through the scope and working. AT 68 I do not seem to have any major problems with the shakes.

I think that scope is about the best in the price range for me as I am just doing SMD and such as a hobby. Just as I bout a $ 60 or so hot air rework station from China that has the hot air wand and soldering pencil. If I was using the equipment to make money,I would get something better.

There is a fellow on youtube (Louis Rossman) that works on Apple computers and at one time he was pushing that scope for the price. I think he uses the same brand now,but with a different modle. For one thing he usse the camera a lot for his speeches on youtube, I don't have any use for the camera. His newer scopes have a way of mounting the camera where he can still see through both lenses and a 3 rd lense for the camera.

Thanks for the info. It's about the same for me. The common characters I can type without looking. The shifted characters require my looking at the keyboard.

I rather prefer adjustable power in the head (0.7x to 3x) as in the Bausch and Lomb scopes. I have a variety of eyepieces but WF10X is what works best for PCB work.

I'm at 70. No shakes. However, I do have some problems adjusting to working under the microscope or HUD. I probably need more practice.

I have the bad habit of buying used test equipment and tools. None of my microscopes were purchased new. A few of my objective lenses and eyepieces were purchased new, but most came with the used scopes. If I were still doing this professionally, I would not have time to do the necessary repairs on the used equipment and probably would have bought something that was ready to use.

"Amscope SE400-z microscope, a must have tool for repair technicians." (7:45)

In the above video, he uses his Android phone through one eyepiece. He has some other scopes, one of which is a trinocular microscope, which has a third tube for the camera (but less working range).

For photos, I have one of these: I should have bought one with a 0.5x lens, but decided to go cheap. Big mistake because the image width is about half the width as viewed through the eyepiece.

I've used a few similar borescopes...the resolution of 640x480 is OK for seeing what is there but beyond that, fairly useless. The image distortion bothered me quite a bit as well. Having said that, do you know of any produce with a higher resolution and better app?

Unfortunately, I'm going to have a high resolution endoscope used on a very sensitive part of my anatomy tomorrow at the local surgery center. I might ask the doctor for his favorite model, but suspect he'll ignore me claiming that I'm drugged or delirious.

This looks fishy, but might be for real. 9mm dia (instead of the usual 8mm) and 2megapixels in 1600x1200 with a 1/6th inch imager.

Compare with the real thing (for $4,000 and up):

I've found the Android and iPhone imaging software to be dismal or worse. All that I've tried will crash with the slightest provocation. Accidentally disconnecting the camera for even milliseconds often requires a forced reboot. I have this bookmarked for later testing. Might be worth trying:

Incidentally, the best high resolution photos I've done were with a commodity digital camera, junkbox optics, and a commercial endoscope. I make the adapter out of plastic plumbing parts turned down to size on my drill press. Ugly, but amazingly useful. Something bolted onto a smartphone might produce decent results: