Imaging - analog and digital

   Since the last major post, I have acquired 3 USB microscopes. These are not full-fledged microscopes, but devices that have zoom factors and light sources. One comes with screenshot/video recording software. I used this to examine a phonograph needle on my turntable. I had enough detail to determine the source of a playback problem.    As a result, I purchased a new stylus and now enjoy my LP collection.

A lot has happened since the last post. I have acquired a Konica Minolta MAxxum 5D, replete with strap, charger and rechargable batteries. Everything works...exfept the CCD. All the pictures taken are blacked out. There's no visible physical damage to the unit. I'm considering opening up the unit and perhaps looking for a loose connection caused by a drop of the camera. I located and downloaded  a service manual with diagrams and service data. I want to continue some exploration of HDR imaging. To this end, I combined my interest in my cell phone's cameras with my HDR interest and found a few programs that seem to do a good job at HDR or providing the needed lo-res images for assembling an HDR image. I prefer the assembly method. The tonemap compressor from Radiance, programmed by Eric Reinhard, is the best general purpose compressor I've run across in the years of working, albeit intermittently, with HDR. The apps for the phone are from the Apple AppStore an