Why are WebCams so poor?

I'm guessing about 4" with the 6x lens, a bit more at 4x.

I tinker with watches too and

The Mantis has stunning stereo effect. There's a knob on the side that sets this... you can set it from flatland to hyper-Manhattan, even

Really, these things are a trip.

I do want a good stereo zoom microscope, up to 70x maybe, with good lighting, for the really small stuff like wirebonds.

John

If you are a Coolpix fan, perhaps you should consider buying a different model second hand. A quick scan show the Coolpix 880/885 go for asking price of 75 Euro. These have manual focus.

Joop

But then I could just keep using my 3x glasses. They were only $15 :-)

I have used that setup a lot in cleanrooms. Works great. It's ok for watches or small assemblies but you cannot get a 6U or 9U board underneath. At least not if you have to work towards the middle of the board.

I was recently given a Fuji Finepix S5200 digital camera to use at Veterans events that has macro capabilities down to 4 inches, and is 5.1 MP 10X optical zoom, and 3x "Digital zoom". I found a 1 GB XD memory module for $15 at Staples, and I am looking for the 5 V 2A AC adapter so i don't have to run it on batteries when I'm downloading pictures. It also will shoot short AVID files, and has NTSC or PAL video output.

OTOH, I did a lot of Surface Mount work under a stereo scope, in the past.

Like the Intel Play USB microscope? the frame rate is on the order of six frames per second and the flicker is horrible. You CAN take some decent pictures, but you waste a lot of time trying to get the best focus. I haven't used mine in over 4 years.

I missed out on an early, manual wire bonding machine at Cincinnati Electronics back in the '70s. They had used it to build hybrids with hand soldered metal caps. Rather than let an employee get it or resell it, it was sent to the scrap yard and crushed. It still had a stereo scope on it, too.

What do you expect? They are smuggled into the US by illegal aliens! ;-)

Would you please post a pic, at 4" I would love to see the resolution.

a.b.s.electonic please.

As soon as I can have my oral surgery. I am so sick right now with multiple low level infections that I can't even hold the camera. I've been waiting nine days for an "Emergency" prescription to be filled and delivered by the VA. Supposedly, it was mailed on Monday from their pharmacy which is 90 miles away. To add insult to injury, they shipped a refill that I already had a 50 day supply, and didn't ask for.

I did take a close shot with one at a Best Buy store, and it looked good on the LCD when previewed. Tomorrow is our Quarterly Memorial for the WWII and other Veterans who have died in the last 90 days, as well as the new 3/5 scale model of the Moving Wall of troops lost in Vietnam. Thanks to someone's screw up, I won't be getting any pictures. Its beginning to look like I need blackmail photos of politicians of different parties in bed with each other to get anything done.

I am sorry to hear about your surgery.

Yes, please feel better, but don't forget us :-).

Please, something relevent to this group.

Thank you and good luck and feel better.

donald

Just out of interest I have just posted into abse a picture taken with a Sony Cybershot WS35. It's a 10mm square, cross hatched at 1mm spacings. The full resolution jpeg is nearly 4 megabytes.

The antibiotics are working well enough for me to see fine detail, so here is the test photo at 4" in macro mode.

See news:alt.binaries.schematics.electronic for: Fuji Finepix S5200 test shot.

Posted at 04:xx GMT.

No sign of it at my ISP, 9 hours later. :(

Binary newsgroups are almost useless anymore. I uploaded it to one of my websites for you. Its 1.25 MB

In message , Michael A. Terrell wrote

Thank you.

You're welcome. What do you think of the picture?

Pretty good, good depth of field. I'm amazed at what these little digital cameras can do these days.

Thanks. Not bad for under $300, US?

Someone on another newsgroup was foaming at the mouth about "excessive color fringing" in that photo, but I don't see it.