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Taking a Good Picture of a PCB
- RF_Savage 4y agoNice article with some actual results and not too long either. If one is on more of a budget here's a video by bigclive how he takes PCB photos on a budget. https://youtu.be/L6sAS-y21xA https://youtu.be/L6sAS-y21xA
- fxtentacle 4y agoI'm surprised it doesn't mention focus stacking
- MartijnBraam 4y agoSo far has not been needed. With the lens I'm using and the amount of light I can stop it down to f/8 and not have issues with blurry parts. For the macro pictures of components I need to look into focus stacking if I want to have both the board and the chip number in focus but that's not a big priority for me.
- sschueller 4y agoBig Clive also has a neat method for his youtube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6sAS-y21xA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6sAS-y21xA
- cfn 4y agoA bit more on the technic (and expensive) side, you can use a Tilt-Shift lens to change the focus plane and get striking results with PCBs or any other small items.
- MartijnBraam 4y agoOh nice idea, I have not even tried using my tilt-shift adapter for this
- Tepix 4y agoAnother option is to lay the PCB on a flatbed scanner. Check out the nice pictures at https://learn-cnc.com/reverse-engineering-pcbs/ https://learn-cnc.com/reverse-engineering-pcbs/ for example.
- ejolto 4y agoI'd be scared of scratching the glass of the scanner.
- laputan_machine 4y agoI'd imagine you should be able to place a thin sheet of perspex - or something similar - to protect the glass
- stavros 4y agoCling film on the bottom?
- ZiiS 4y agoPCBs rarely contain diamonds. For decent scanners with real glass this is not a major problem.
- stavros 4y ago> Another option is to lay the PCB on a flatbed scanner. That's detailed in the article.
- logifail 4y agoOutdoors on a cloudy day can give excellent results too, especially if you use a camera where you can manually control the exposure.
- vinguyn 4y agoWhy not auto white balance the off-white background? Seems easier than making a mask.
- andreareina 4y agoThat would mess with the colors on the pcb
- MartijnBraam 4y agoThat would make everything lit with the flashes look way too yellow. also it wouldn't make it a perfectly FFFFFF white mask around the board.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 4y agoThe ingenious trick at the end: using a lightbox, take two pictutee: one with cirre lighting, and another heavily underexposed. The latter shows everything black but the background, and serves as a perfect mask for the former for background removal. It's sort of anti-HDR. The author automates processing using imagemagick.
- mk_stjames 4y agoIn an industrial setting, it is common for PCB/component inspection to take images using a telecentric lens, to eliminate all perspective on any tall components around the sides (and also allow precision measurement using optical processing only). That, coupled with good lighting and sometimes polarization can result in pictures of components so perfect that they look like they were renderings.
- postalrat 4y agoI've been thinking about doing this with a telecentric lens but the one in have is like 5 inches so would need to stitch a bunch of images for a bigger board. And bigger lenses are big bucks.
- cyclotron3k 4y agoThe author may be interested in gphoto - a way to control cameras over USB: https://github.com/gphoto/gphoto2 https://github.com/gphoto/gphoto2
- MartijnBraam 4y agoIf it's supported that would require buying the propriatary usb cable for this camera sadly. And I'd have to have the computer nearby.
- matja 4y agoIf you don't have a lightbox, a long exposure (15-30 seconds, might need a very small f-stop or ND filter) and waving an LED torch around the PCB is almost as good at removing all the shadows, but less consistent.
- analog31 4y ago>>> All dust looks 1000x worse on pictures :( Indeed, I use a cheap paintbrush and a blast of air to remove dust from small things, including circuit boards, before I have to take a picture.
- dboreham 4y agoShould use a longer focus lens to avoid perspective distortion.
- MartijnBraam 4y agoWell the downside is that with my longer lenses I'd have to make a hole in the ceiling :D
- MengerSponge 4y agoRelated very cool project: https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2022/open-circuits-out/ https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2022/open-circuits-out/