From: William E. Sabin on Aug 28, 2:07 am

Thanks for the info. I'll keep it in mind. My miniature bench vise can hold
the glass steady.

Unless you do time-exposures (rare), it is possible to hand-hold
the magnifier without blurring or distortion. The LCD is better
than the 35mm SLR through-the-lens viewfinder in my opinion.

My Sony has a built-in zoom feature that works pretty well. The auto-focus
works OK, but works better with a little background light.

Most seem to be like that...more light the better. I've used a
20 W halogen-bulb mini desk light from the IKEA store for good
Illumination on small subjects. According to the old Norwood
photo meter it has the same output as a 150 W incandescent
flood at 2 feet. ["over 150 W CW above 300 GHz" - :-) ]

The savings in film and developing costs is a true breakthrough for an
amateur casual photographer like me who needs to do everything at least a
dozen times and likes to see the immediate results.

As one who got into "serious" amateur photography in high school
(Class of '51), 35mm route, I have to say it's *FANTASTIC*! :-)

Wife and I got a Panasonic that holds all images on a 3 1/2" floppy
"Super Disk" (over 500 MB) back in 2000. A couple years ago I
started to "take notes" on various projects with that camera, find
it is ideal to show progress, even to show oscilloscope screen
waveforms (tripod or other stable mounting recommended, plus a large
cover cloth to cut out background reflections).

That Panasonic model went off the market but it continues to work
fine. A new Aiptek still/motion-picture we just got cost only a
third of the Panasonic's price; I'm still getting acquainted with
it only two weeks out of the box. Smaller, lighter, it has a
manually-selectable short-range focus capability. The tripod we
use with it (in place of cheap supplied mini-tripod) was bought
by me in NYC in 1952 for use with a Kodak Retina II 35mm range-
finder camera. [sometimes pack-ratting is good :-)]

Bill W0IYH, Life Member IEEE



(also Life Member, IEEE)