Easy micro camera shots (or at least how I do them)

Hello, tis your old windbag Osgeld here spreading a easy way to do micro shots!

I started this the week before I moved, I found instructables in this apartment, and it seemed somewhat fitting to do one last one before I boxed up my gear,

Basically I am shoving my radio shack magnifying glass in front of my old freebie digital camera.

The results are quite decent when you want to get a really close up shot of something... which can be really handy for certain situations, like, oh maybe, instructables

Step 1: Gear

Magnifying Glass:
I have a radio shack pocket style one that has 5x, 10x and 15x lenses. I picked it up at my local shack on clearance for 5 bucks, or they sell them online for 9

http://www.radioshack.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=2032311

Digital Camera with LCD and a manual / macro mode:
Mine is a old Toshiba PDRM500, it was given to my wife a few years ago from her dad and it was quite old then. Its 2 mega pixels, and last time I had it battery powered it sucked down 4 cheap gas station AA batteries in 6 or 7 shots.

You don't need a great camera, I use this one in all the closeup shots and it does fine (even if it is tethered to the wall)

And something to take a closeup of:
In this case, some qfp telephone chip on a pcb from a digital answering machine I still have yet to scavenge

Step 2: Camera Setup

The Following step should be about the same for any half way recent digital camera, but please consult your owners manual for detailed instructions for your specific make and model

Set your camera into manual mode:
On most cameras its just a simple matter of turning the wheel on top to the icon of a camera with a M beside it. You can use automatic mode (no M beside the camera) but it might be difficult to get a good shot.

Set your focus to macro mode:
Once in manual mode, look through the menu and find out how to change your focus from automatic, to macro mode.

On both mine and my wifes (much nicer and newer GE) camera, they just had to be set in manual mode then push the menu button. Once in the menu I just selected focus and set it to macro

Finally Zoom all the way out:
You will not be able to use the camera's built in optical zoom much if any at first, so zoom it all the way out

Step 3: Shot Setup

You want to hold the magnifying glass directly over the camera lens, you want the center of both lenses over each other

Get close, watching the lcd until you get a good clear image of the item you want

Steady your hands, here I have my elbows propped up on my legs, then my hands are propped on the edge of the table.

Adjust the magnifying lens and your hands one final time, watching the lcd for the clearest image of the subject

Hold down the shutter button half way, let the camera adjust its focus, my camera flashes a green box on the screen when its got it (and a annoying chirpy noise). If all looks good on the lcd continue pushing down the shutter button to take the picture

Step 4: Check Results

It is very important to go ahead and check every shot you take right after you take it. It is very easy to slight move something while holding the camera and magnifying glass AND pushing a button

You can tell pretty quickly if you need to take another or not. If your image looks good on the first go, most cameras let you zoom in while your viewing the image, do so and make sure you got what you want.

If everything is okay, move on to the next shot and enjoy!

Questions or comments please let me know!

Step 5: More Result Images

The first 3 are from pimp my pong

The last one was one of the few pictures I saved when I first started to play with this. It is an image of a single strand from a floppy drive ribbon cable, with a solid core wire