Question (or small nit-pick, take your choice): Why use JB-Weld to attach the bolts if the stuff can be both molded and tapped?

@signal7: a picture of an insect is the best example for macro-optics. You can see, how close you can get (insects are very small…usually) and how good the focusing and DoF is (has the picture some nice sharp focus? Does the DoF go deep enough?)

What you can’t see on a picture of an insect, but on that one of the NEC µC, is the distortion of the whole rig. I don’t know if its the lens (probably not), the Webcam guts or the rest of the setup, but you clearly can see how straight lines get bond at the edges of the picture.

I was hoping to see some silicone… I’m disappoint.

This thing has some major distortion issues.

It’s clearly visible, that only the center of the image is focused, although the chips are photographed in parallel to the image plane.

Was any of the pictures made with a small aperture? (high aperture value) E.g. higher than 8?

Hmm… img tag not supported…

http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/images2/404silicone.gif

@Amos I know the difference between silicon and silicone; my previous message was a joke about not seeing breasts in the original article…

Put this on the Spy Video TRAKR to fix the camera! And you where wondering what the flat bay was for on the TRACKR…

Those Helios 44-2 lenses typically go on old Russian Zenit cameras (ebaY is your friend). They will fit Pentax cameras too, or so I’m told. The Helios 44 series of lenses are famous for their Bokeh effect in creative photography (Wikipedia knows about this).

Drifting further into the sunset… The Helios 44M is auto-aperture capable and mates nicely with the very popular Zenit-TTL. Unfortunately you can’t get the 1.3x Volt battery for the Zenit-TTL any more but you can get 1.5V cells. This makes the light meter off by one stop or so (now there’s something to hack).

Used to be you could find Zenit-TTL bodies (the black ones with non-Cyrillic writing are prolific and typically good buys) with 44M lenses for around $50 bucks plus shipping, if you look a bit.

Now… where was I? Ah yes, time for my medication.

@Nomad i usually used f10 to f16 to get enough contrast, makes everything really noticeable with the narrow depth of field

taking pictures of eproms and mcus through the window is problematic because the quartz window usually isn’t flat but more of a bubble which causes the edges to bend, at some point ill try with bare silicon