Macro Photography

First, the question, What is macro photography?

Put simply, it is taking extreme close-up shots, usually of very small objects. Most people use a macro lens with a camera, but in my case, I never do anything the easy way, so I took the microscope I usually use for some surface mount electronics work and ordered an adapter to allow me to use it with my DSLR.

And yes, count on there being more on this microscope/DSLR setup in the next few months.

As for subjects for these shots, and given my background in the electronics business, taking photographs of parts of chips is the obvious choice.

Initially, I encountered difficulty in locating a chip suitable for visual examination of the die, given that plastic or ceramic encapsulation completely covers most chips.

My options for this are quite limited. The practical choices are either an old UV erasable EPROM or some type of Charge Coupled Device (CCD) sensor.

As it happened, I had just scrapped an ancient Sony camcorder and still had the boards in the junk bin.

Removing the CCD from the board was easy, but detaching the glued-on addonal optics required more effort and ended up needing brute force.

And yes, this will be a multi-part series of macro shots, as fairly recently, I have upgraded my DSLR to something with way higher resolution, and from a junked camera, I have a better CCD sensor. Watch this space for updates.