Digital Phototesting the QX3 microscope

Well folks, After hearing about the QX3 microscope on Orchid, I
bought it to see if it really had any potential . For
Photography of jewelry, I don’t think it works at all.At this
point, i say save your money !!! There did not seem to be any
depth of field and the ring had to be practically sitting on
the lense.This was at 10x, the lowest power of the microscope.By
backing away slowly to a point where it might be possible to see
the whole ring, the ring was now visible , but it was now out of
focus. On the other hand, if you want to photograph the internal
structure of a diamond at 200x it might work! The settings
are fixed at 10X , 60 X , and 200 X If the person who said
they worked bought one of these , I would really like to know
what type of item and how you got it to work? It does work well
for looking at fleas :slight_smile: Daniel Grandi

Daniel, Here is the original post I sent in.

    A friend of mine is an engineer for a medical company that
produces extremely small endo-fectors for retrieving tissue
samples in arteries etc. These small forceps are photographed
using a simple toy produced by Mattel and Intel. It is a
microscope that actually interfaces with your parallel port
and the quality at 10X was incredible. I would say that other
than professionally taken pics, these are by far the best pics
I have ever seen, especially on detail and clarity. The best
part is that it costs approx. $90. Do not be fooled by this
toy, it is for real. 

However when I saw your post it gave me food for thought and
therefore I called my friend to find out how he did the larger
pieces. His reply was that he took out the lense or lenses (not
sure how many and how, did not say) to gain a 1x or 1 to1 ratio
and was able to capture the larger image this way. I do not now
if it is a simple task or what was really involved in
dissasembling the plastic body. This was not intended as a solve
all application but as a solution for some practices of capturing
images. As you mentioned for stones at the 10x level it is
appropriate and as mentioned in my origininal post it does say
extremely small. It is at the end of the day the end user’s
discression whether it is a tool for them or not. Try the take out
lense procedure and see if this really is a viable solution or
not. Common sense will tell you right away that this is not for
bracelets etc and that it does have a limited work volume or
capture area. Now I have to sell my shares in Mattel :slight_smile: Best
Regards. Neil George.

– I looked at this for my grandson and decided that it is
neither a microscope nor a scanner, more toy than
anything. I bought a real microscope for him.

   ==Pisces   @mbm