Friday, February 12, 2010

IC Pics Using a Standard Digital Camera

This is if you're like me you can't afford a big expensive microscope and too lazy to get a job. I managed to salvage a manual adjusting lens assembly from an old video camera and put it to good use by putting my cameras lens directly up to the old video camera lens. Then I zoomed to the max and adjusted the video camera lens to focus it.



Okay so its taped to my desk and has a flashlight pointing into it, but I was actually pretty satisfied with the pictures considering the fact it literally was a 30 second idea and was pretty good for a water-droplet sized IC. I am still working with my cameras settings because I do not know how to use it, but I wrekon I can get a better picture with some trial and error. This was the best one I got because I couldnt keep my camera still for the likes of me and cant find my tripod.

3 comments:

  1. Excellent work! I'd like to try something like this with the $12 60-100X (or so they say) handheld microscope I picked up at Radioshack. Did you decap those chips yourself? If so, what was the general process you used?

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  2. Random idea: the top pic looks like it has quite a lot of chromatic abberation - might it be sharper if you used monochromatic light?

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  3. Other thing to make all better. In old days I use CD drive pickup to look inside chips ;)
    To get great image and ilumination, you can use a reflected light source, that passes throught the lens you use to see. Just use a slice of glass 45° anguled to reflect narrow light to final point of view. much like CD pickup do to see.

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