Another A430 Super Macro pic... and a question about magnification/resolution

lsica

I know the QX5 will do 60x magnification....

But since it only produces 640 x 480 images, how is that better than just zooming in on a 640x480 portion of a super-close-super-macro 2300x1700 4 MP image?

DickyBetz

Hmm, good question.

mrearlygold

Wow!

DorkGirl

No one said it is better, but it is easier...

lsica

QX5 at 60x




A430 Super Macro

AU58WALKERS

I wish I could could take pictures.

BECOKA

There is little difference, it is just that the microscope is much easier. The macro lens is a little harder to focus on small details but when it is focused the results are amazing.

lsica

QX5 at 60x does seem to produce more "magnified" resolution. A430 at the tightest super-macro (0.4 cm or about 7/16") looks like it does effectively 30 to 40x

mgoodm3

Not a huge difference. Some factors involved.

1: Zooming up using all the megapixels that god gave you. Smaller pixels on a detector tend to have more noise. So a 640 x480 detector that's the same size as a 3000 x 2000 detector will tend to have less noise. Get the image on the detector as big as you can to minimize.

2. Zooming up will stress the quality of the optics a bit more (using less area of the lens to take the same picture), probably not a huge difference, more if a cheap camera.

rmpsrpms

<< <i>Not a huge difference. Some factors involved.

1: Zooming up using all the megapixels that god gave you. Smaller pixels on a detector tend to have more noise. So a 640 x480 detector that's the same size as a 3000 x 2000 detector will tend to have less noise. Get the image on the detector as big as you can to minimize.

2. Zooming up will stress the quality of the optics a bit more (using less area of the lens to take the same picture), probably not a huge difference, more if a cheap camera. >>



I see two other differences:

A. Depth of field. The macro technique will generally result in a better depth of field. Microscopes at high power lack in this area.

B. Lens distortion across field. The "digital zoom" image is only a small portion of the entire lens field, and thus suffers less from aberrations. Also, the microscope objective lens is quite a bit smaller than the macro camera objective, making a high quality, low aberration lens difficult to manufacture.

C. Lens distortion from multiple lenses. The macro technique likely puts the image through fewer lenses, thus fewer overall aberrations.

All this said, I personally use a microscope setup for my photos (B&L StereoZoom) rather than digital zoom, but the impressive results shown here show that a good high-megapixel system can do a superb job!

rmpsrpms

Here are some pics from the StereoZoom/Nikon combo setup. I've varied the Microscope mag from 10-30, Camera opitical mag from 1-3, and digital mag from 1-4. I'll take a few more later today to compare 30x Microscope/1x Camera optical versus 10x Microscope/3x optical, and 30x Microscope/3x optical/1x digital versus 10x Microscope/3x optical/3x digital.

Microscope 10x, Camera 1x Optical, 1x Digital (10X total)


Microscope 20x, Camera 1x Optical, 1x Digital (20x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 1x Optical, 1x Digital (30x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 2x Optical, 1x Digital (60x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 1x Digital (90x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 1.4x Digital (125x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 2x Digital (180x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 3x Digital (270x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 4x Digital (360x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 1x Digital (90x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 1.4x Digital (125x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 2x Digital (180x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 3x Digital (270x total)


Microscope 30x, Camera 3x Optical, 4x Digital (360x total)

jonathanb

Cool zoom!