inexpensive computer microscope

[tcmeyer]

Out of curiosity tonight, I took a few photos of a small SOG folder I had polished with the diamond glass film. The polish wasn’t to impressive with a lot of scratches, but the intention was to see what blow-ups would look like. The black on the bevels is due to the mirror polish.

These are three photos, each taken with my Celestron at 5MP resolution. All are “face of the shroud” focused. There’s a little dust or skin cells floating about, but you get the idea. I went into Corel PaintShopPhoto pro and cropped the images down to 1/4 size, or 1296 X 972 pixels, or about 1.3MP. The first image is of the calibration film they supply. Each of the black graduations is 0.5 mmm. Each of the blue graduations seen on the backing paper is 1/16″.

Interesting that when I cropped the images their file size went from less than a meg to 1.54 meg. More detail to display, I guess.

Scaling Test

Left Side Bevel

Right Side Bevel

I also include here one of the original photo images with the 5MP resolution intact for comparison. Obviously, it’s the Left side bevel.

Since our average Plamsa or LED computer monitors display display up to 1080p, You don’t get an advantage unless you zoom in or print as photos.

Now, will this upload OK? Check tomorrow about noon…

Attachments:

• scalingtestcropped.jpg
• sogpolished2cropped.jpg
• sogpolishedcropped.jpg
• sogpolished2.jpg

[Mark76]

Nice pics!

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Zamfir]

Yes! those came out good. So is that a continuous bevel then at one angle? Or were you able to just get that much magnification of your micro bevel? So you are saving them as the full 5MP and then cropping out the section that was in full focus?

[Cliff Stamp]

You can do focus stacking with any camera, there are free software packages that will do that for you. What you will find to get the highest quality pictures are :

-lighting
-glare
-movement

You really want to have the knife fixed as the smallest amount will blur it out.

In regards to magnification you will maximize at about 50X linear optically and then the rest is just digital. If you try to go over that you will have pretty severe FoD issues and things start to get blurry fast. Even with a really high end metallurgical microscope you can’t see much more because the 500-1000X magnification shots simply can’t get in focus to show any detail on the edge, hence why you have to use SEM’s .

[tcmeyer]

The cropping was done only to demonstrate the difference in resolution and what the pics look like. I usually save at 2MP, which is very close to the 5MP quality. I think you’ll enjoy the Celestron. It’s a bargain at $86.

[Zamfir]

Thanks Cliff. I will have to check it out. The main reason I picked this up is to help with checking the edges as I go which works perfect. In that situation you are moving all over the place but it is neat how your eyes filter the crap out and pick up on the focused stuff. It looks much better than the pictures. I agree though you can not move it a hair! At least I can get some good pictures to ask questions with..maybe not publication quality at this point. I will have to play with some of that software you are talking about. Sounds neat!

Thanks!

You can do focus stacking with any camera, there are free software packages that will do that for you. What you will find to get the highest quality pictures are :

-lighting
-glare
-movement

You really want to have the knife fixed as the smallest amount will blur it out.

In regards to magnification you will maximize at about 50X linear optically and then the rest is just digital. If you try to go over that you will have pretty severe FoD issues and things start to get blurry fast. Even with a really high end metallurgical microscope you can’t see much more because the 500-1000X magnification shots simply can’t get in focus to show any detail on the edge, hence why you have to use SEM’s .

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