Thread: Microphoto Technique?

What kind of microscope are people using to inspect and photograph blade edges during sharpening? Is this just a low-power dissecting scope, or something else? About what magnification do you use? Any tricks?

Thanks.

There is a neat trick in here: Category:Photography - Straight Razor Place Wiki. microscope +photo site:straightrazorplace.com - Google Search also has lots of relevant hits.

I don't know about photography however for inspection a good handlens will do the trick depending on what detail you want to see an inexpensive magnifier or a high quality one. If high quality probably 20X or so is all you need. The cheaper ones go much higher in mag but you are compensating mag for resolution.

Unless you have a DSLR camera, tripod, light source, reversing ring and good quality prime lens, then in my opinion you are better off buying a USB microscope - it will be cheaper. Ones I have seen have the light source built in, they plug straight into the computer and you can use the software to take 'snaps' of what you see.

As thebigspendur says, resolution is a key point to image quality. As with lenses, the true guide to image quality is 'optical resolution.' This (sometimes called 'native' resolution) is what the lens is actually capable of delivering. Be aware that 'interpolated' resolution is not the same thing - intermediate values are assigned a value by the software, so you are not seeing what is there for these in-between values but what the software thinks should be there.

Regards,
Neil