Why are WebCams so poor?

Joerg if it's anything like the one I pulled apart it has plastic lenses which isn't going to help.

Probably the lens.

No two ways around it, you need to spend a few hundred dollars on an actual stereoscope with real lenses. Or if you want to take pictures after the fact, a bridge camera with super macro mode is a good idea.

Since their normal retail price is $50 I'd assume so :-(

No problem, it's just that I don't work well with microscopes and some of the boards are too big to fit underneath. With 3x glasses it's no problem down to 0402 and even smaller. But when you have to look up at a scope in between it is a hassle.

$10 doesn't buy a lot of optics. Get a Mantis... it will change your life.

John

Hm, I don't know what you mean. Here's what we use:

With an illuminator.

You can work with those if you provide a pedestal for the board so it can glide over that black base in the back. But besides not liking microscopes that much I was also looking at something less monstrous. The lab here at my consulting office isn't very big.

Light is key to all that stuff. That's why I've got pretty elaborate halogen lighting here.

Normally it's $50 retail. But that still doesn't buy a lot of optics. That's why I was asking whether a hack would work. IOW equip it with a really nice lens. However, if the CMOS sensor can't hold up that would be a waste of time (this camera is glued together as if prepared for the next world war).

I had to use a Mantis at a client once. It's too wobbly IMHO, almost made me sea-sick. Well, maybe because lots of people in the plane had a hacking cough and I was working up a flu. But it was definitely to wobbly for me.

What are you talking about? I assume you don't mean:

Only camera setup I saw via google was an experimental camera put on an actual mantis.

Isn't that just a bitch.... I have the same problem....... Old age and too much SM work :(

Martin S.

Joerg wrote in news:hVTOh.10220$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr13.news.prodigy.net:

they are not made for close focus. Probably a minimum of 2 feet(or greater).

That link doesn't work for me. But I think Joerg wants something to work under, not necessarily a camera. The Mantis is superb for rework, soldering, and inspection. It has brilliant lighting, sharp images (billions of pixels!), super adjustable stereo effects, and lots of working distance for soldering irons and tools. I was just now using it to replace some 0805's (huge) and US8 ic's (really tiny) and it's great.

I do take pictures through the regular Mantis, for eco's and such, with a regular digital camera. I posted some to abse a while back.

John

I held a lens in front of it and, actually, with that I could even get a better picture for larger distances. But then there was lots of blurring and smear with or without it. So I could hack the thing and put a top notch lens in front but I don't want to go that route if in the end the CMOS sensor isn't going to work right. I grew up with image sensors and even designed a camera but these were all CCD.

Could you give me a link to one? Or a brand name? I searched on google for 'mantis camera' and got nothing.

No.

No. The best digital cameras on the market use CMOS sensors:

You've just answered your own question. What sort of optical & electronic quality would you expect from a device that costs a few dollars to make?

I use an ugly but cheap stereoscopic magnifying headset & plenty of light.

The image sensor is quite small on those camcorders. Combine the tiny sensor and the crappy lens and you get what you pay for. ;-)

You can use a decent camera from Supercircuits with a reasonably long focal length C-mount lens (50mm) AND the hard thing to get, the C- mount macro spacers. They are cheap when on ebay, but they don't show up often.

gets you there, but I wouldn't use a bellows.

I think I got my set of tubes for under $20 on ebay.

I used an Intel PC cam that had a video jack on the back, but any frame grabber will do.