Photodocumenting your work

My phone lets me say "shoot"

Sure, but cell phones start with a lens maybe 1/20 the diameter of a professional DSLR. In practise, a phone usually takes better pictures of electronics than a camera.

I think that phones tend to have amazing software. And as phones are typically short lived, while cameras are long lived, it is possibly that you replace the phone with a better one before you do with the camera, and get even better software.

But phones get tiny lenses. It must be more difficult to manufacture a perfect tiny lenses, while on big ones the defects should not be that big. Maybe I'm wrong.

I learnt on this thread about focus stacking. This is amazing. I understand it is taking several photos with different focus distances, and then the software joining them so that you get perfect focus of the entire object.

I wonder if my new camera can do that, probably not. Huh, yes, something called "[Post Focus]/[Focus Stacking].

Wow. :-o

There is a software trick. Instead of one long exposure, they do a bunch of fast photos, and add them in software. Thus, no tripod needed, and take photos in the dark...

I guess it would be possible to stack a bunch of photos adjusting each to the light conditions and focus at different depths in the hole.

I have mediocre vision and my Mantis is amazing. It's 3D in the sense that you can really perceive depth and can move your head around and see the perspective change, like a bird flying over a building. It has great working distance too, a pleasure to probe or solder under.

Ok, so it is not a tool for just making pictures for documentation, but a tool for working.

Interesting.

I wondered how people could work with a modern PCB with chips the size of the nail of my smallest finger, which I have difficulty even counting the pins, nevermind seeing if the solder is good or bad.

My guess is mine can. But I'll have to read the doc three times and then experiment before I understand it. Then I'll know how long it takes to do a picture. I read in the doc that they warn that the camera can overheat while doing this type of shot (oh? :-o), so wait and let it cool down if that's the case.

So, no bees :-D

The sample photo is of a cupboard key set obliquely. Not a bee ;-)

Of course. Not as in police movies :-P

Yep.

Quite...

Too many things. My mind exploded when reading just the "quick" manual of my new camera.

The Mantis really helps, but you still need a steady hand, and some parts are absurd. I can solder SOTs and TSSOPs, but not the crazy US8 package. I just glob solder on all the pins and then wick most of it off.

The leadless and BGA and PowerPad packages are pretty much impossible. I send them down to production.

I try to design with big klunky parts that I can probe and solder.

Only at extremely high magnifications or if you are cack handed.

What generation of digital phone are you considering? All of the modern models with a nominal optical zoom capability have a second "zoom" lens camera with around a 10Mpixel sensor *in addition* to their headline wide field insanely high Mpixel camera.

Samsung 23A Ultra is probably about the most extreme example I can think of: "a quad camera setup at the back including a 200MP wide-angle camera,

10MP telephoto camera with 10x optical zoom, 10MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom, and a 12MP ultrawide camera. It also has a 12MP selfie camera that comes with Auto HDR and HDR10+ support."

Personally I have a Google Pixel 6 which is extremely capable and will fit into very tight spaces. My DSLR needs a an 8" cube of space and evan more if it has the proper macro lens or extension tubes on the front.

Apple iPhones have always had exceptionally good cameras too and for their price so do the Motorola series.

I find it amazing that they can get quite such good low light images out of such a tiny sensor. The CCD must be pushing very close to the well overflow limits and some now do multiple exposures to overcome this.

You can usually find a blue tooth option for controlling cameras or a dedicated controller like Pentax do. One thing I miss on digital cameras is a way to do long time exposures with a classic cable release.

Some can also be slaved to a phone app or IR controller.

There can be "cable release" by connecting some external gadget to one of the plugs in the camera body. But not a mechanical cable release like we had for over a century, that worked on all camera models.

But the gadgets can do more than the old mechanical cables (and thus be more expensive). Like doing an autorepeat. Take a thousand photos, one per second, or a 3 second shot every five seconds. Then the gadget is called "intervalometer" os something similar in English.

Ok, then I don't feel that dumb :-))

Fair enough.

But I can with my Nikon D3200. It is how I shot shooting stars.

Well, apparently my Nikon exports nothing. The proprietary Android app is basically crap, can do no adjustment at all, only shoot and download photos. Oh, and adjust the clock and add GPS info.

X'-D

I like 0805 parts, but some people that I know want to use 0603 and even smaller. They think 0805 is "old fashioned." Few boards need the density of the smaller parts, and they get hotter, and are hard to probe, and probe slips blow up boards. Those same people usually blow up first article boards.

If one uses legible reference designators, say 50 mils or preferably bigger, smaller parts don't save much board area.

Leadless parts suck.

ST makes a wonderful LDO, ST1L08, but they put it into a crazy 2x3 mm DFN8 package. It's impossible to probe but worse, it's impossible to get heat out of. Imagine a linear reg with 25 K/W.

Worse, they magnify a pic on a newspaper page and read some fine print or something.

I get two rushes. As the camera is clicking away I am seated in a lounge chair just looking up, I get the rush and issue the proper oohhhs and aahhss when a star passes. There remains the doubt if it will be on camera or not.

Then another rush as I examine the thousand photos to see how many I did catch :-D

Ah, no, I have to drive out a hundred kilometres or more to get to a suitable spot.

Ok, maybe 30 Km to other, non perfect, sites.

Spain is very well lighted.

They must be well hidden, I found basically nothing when searching for gadgets :-(