Stone Bridge.. 320x240 should be big enough?

In 1995 I purchased an Apple Quicktake 100, one of the first consumer market digital cameras. It could store just 8 photos at 640×480 resolution (0.3 megapixels) on an internal 1MB EPROM. It had no LCD preview, no focus, and no zoom controls. Images were transferred via serial cable. What more would you want for $750?

At 320×240 resolution, uhhh.. 0.08 megapixels, the device could store 32 photos. Competitive with a roll of film! Sadly, I took quite a few photos in this mode. Nowadays, those same photos make nice thumbnails, or desktop icons.

QuickTake 100 at Night - Zurich

Low-light performance was poor; there were no sensor sensitivity controls, and no way to preview shots. Still, the device did manage to take some decent night photos without excessive noise. Of course, there wasn’t much opportunity to overexpose with a minimum shutter speed of just 1/30s..

iPhone4 HDR

Much has been written lately about the high quality of the latest iPhone’s camera, how megapixels aren’t the only metric, and how it outperforms other cell and consumer cameras.

The ability to easily take HDR and panorama shots, with zero postprocessing effort, and instantly share them, gives the iPhone4 some advantages over even the highest-end SLR’s.

Even the low-light performance has improved dramatically. With previous generation iPhones, I wouldn’t even bother to reach in my pocket unless there was an abundance of light.

Boston Common Bridge, iPhone4

It is about the software.

Despite the improvements, though, low-light continues to be one area where small, noise-sensitive sensors like the one in the iPhone have a very long way to go. They say “the best camera is the one you have with you”. If it is dark, and you aren’t far from home, then it might just be worth going to get the camera you don’t have with you.

Compare the following two photos taken on subsequent nights with the iPhone4 and Nikon D300.

Boston Common Bridge, Nikon D300

It is impressive that the tiny phone sensor is able to resolve any image whatsoever. But, beyond the engineering feat, the photo isn’t worth much.

table salt at 200x

Received an EyeClops BioniCam for Christmas.

Device records magnified movies/images to a removable USB stick, in FAT16, which is hence, Linux (and Mac OS X) compatible..

Manufacturer warns that “the Eyeclops is a handheld bionic microscope meant to be used as a fun toy – not as an educational aid.”

I’m no expert, but a tech gadget, particularly an electronic microscope, which is easy to use, magnifies whatever you point it at to 400x, and captures live video or photographs… that seems fun, and educational, to me..

serrated blade at 100x

To coincide with an exhibit during the month of March at the Denver Athletic Club, the new photo site is launched.

www.pcharles.com

the setup

Background

This silicon zoo site has some interesting photos taken from under a microscope. They feature artwork added to commercial computer chips by circuit designers.

The Project

I was curious if it would be possible to capture micron-size features with my own digital camera, so I rigged my D100 camera with all the magnification gear I could find:

I ended up using three Kenko 12, 20 and 36mm extension stacked together, plus a set of old Nikon PB4 bellows, 60mm Micro Nikkor lense and a SunPak +4 magnifying lense.

The Subject

the subject

The subject is a computer chip which Chris Ematrudo and I designed for a college project. The chip is a systolic array processing element which the national science foundation paid to have fabricated. Unfortunately for the national science foundation, the chip didn’t work properly.

With the 60mm Micro Nikkor lense, you get an overview of the subject. The actual ‘chip’ is quite large because of the packaging used and the large number of pins required to address all the bits in the array processor.

Magnified and Photographed

w/ 60mm Micro +4x filter

The actual die containing the processor itself is only 1/16th of a square inch. The attached photo was taken using the 60mm Micro Nikkor plus 4+ magnifying filter.

To get additional magnification, I attached the PB4 bellows. The focal length is changed by twisting a thumb screw that pulls the front plane of the lense element along a metal track. Light metering, aperture, and shutter speed are adjusted manually with the bellows attached.

With the bellows fully extended, and all the components attached, very little visible light reaches the eyepiece. I had to turn all of the lights off in the room, cover subject with a sheet and use a bright flashlight to illuminate the circuit in order to see enough detail to properly focus.

w/ Nikon PB4

The flashlight has to be carefully aligned to avoid creating a shadow from the lense on the circuit. The surface of the lense is just a few millimeters from the chip’s surface.

The text on the chip is not a functional piece of the electronics. It was created by depositing small squares of metal in a void on the silicon surface. The width of smallest features (including the traces which form the text) is 2 microns.

2 micron technology was nearly state of the art in 1992.

Ten years later, Intel’s Pentium III Xeon processor is fabricated using a 0.18-micron process.