Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;SuperDave, post: 2666858, member: 1892&quot;]If you&#039;re not involving a digital sensor, mechanical and digital magnification aren&#039;t happening. Optical magnification <b>only</b>. </p><p><br /></p><p>Mechanical magnification is why even the &quot;small&quot; 10MP sensor on my Rebel XT requires me to downsize my images by half before I post them here - they&#039;re too huge onscreen to post full size. It&#039;s also why I&#039;ve never brought more than 4x optical magnification to bear on a coin - I don&#039;t need a stereoscope, my camera does all those roles on my monitor. 2500 pixels on the sensor of my camera is only 15mm high, but on my display those pixels are physically something close to 20&quot; tall. That&#039;s mechanical magnification in action.</p><p><br /></p><p>Digital magnification is all in software, the code is literally inserting extra pixels where it thinks they should be, and code doesn&#039;t collect coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>To achieve the same level of &quot;apparent&quot; detail presented to your eye, you&#039;d probably (I&#039;m guesstimating) need something around 20-30x optical on a stereo microscope to achieve the same combination of optical/mechanical magnification I get from my camera/monitor combination. And the physical size and resolution of the monitor - as you might imagine - form a direct part of the total mechanical magnification number.</p><p><br /></p><p>A zoom lens on a camera is an optical magnifier. It increases the size of the image (reduces the total field of view) given to the sensor, and although modern zoom lenses can be very sharp indeed, they are pitiful compromises when used in a &quot;macro&quot; role. Or, they would be, but the price of that zoom is inability to focus close enough to make &quot;macro&quot; useful. </p><p><br /></p><p>The smaller the megapixel count on a &quot;digital&quot; USB scope, the more it leans on digital and optical magnification to achieve a &quot;big&quot; picture. And make no mistake about it, strict optical magnification in excess of 5x which offers sufficient quality for our purposes is <b>expensive</b>. It ain&#039;t gonna be found in a cheap USB scope, so they&#039;re achieving those ridiculous &quot;magnification&quot; claims some other way.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in