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I have some TEK instrument manuals on Microfiche.
Images are less than half an inch across.
I'd like to print pages of fiche.

I have a Quantor 308 microfiche reader.
I've tried setting up a digital camera to take pix
off the reader. This works, sorta, but the reader
doesn't zoom and can't display the whole page at once.
Have to take 4 pictures and stitch them together.
Takes a long time and quality is poor.

I bought a Tamron Fotovix TF60WU. The concept is
right, the zoom is adequate, but the video output
resolution is woefully insufficient.

What's a cheap, like zero is cheap, method to get
digital images of tiny stuff? I have a 2MP camera,
Kodak DC280,
I could dedicate to the project, but the darn lens
moves in and out. Can't figure out how I can hook anything
to it. I'm gonna need at least one more lens to get
close enough focus.

I have a stereo inspection microscope that could do the
job, but again, can't figure out how to get the
camera attached to it with the moving lens assembly.

Experimented with a flatbed scanner with extremely poor results.

I have a large amount of fiche, so it's impractical to
convert it before I need it. Whatever I do won't be used
much, if ever, so needs to be cheap.

Suggestions?
Thanks, mike

mike <> writes:
> What's a cheap, like zero is cheap, method to get digital images of
> tiny stuff? I have a 2MP camera, Kodak DC280, I could dedicate to
> the project, but the darn lens moves in and out. Can't figure out
> how I can hook anything to it. I'm gonna need at least one more
> lens to get close enough focus.

Try something like a Raynox close-up lens. As a first approximation,
shoot through a cheap loupe.

> I have a large amount of fiche, so it's impractical to convert it
> before I need it. Whatever I do won't be used much, if ever, so
> needs to be cheap.

If it's not worth considering not-so-cheap solutions, maybe it's not
worth doing at all.

In article <PVERg.1480$Wi1.1276@trnddc06>, mike <> wrote:

> I have some TEK instrument manuals on Microfiche.
> Images are less than half an inch across.
> I'd like to print pages of fiche.
>
> I have a Quantor 308 microfiche reader.
> I've tried setting up a digital camera to take pix
> off the reader. This works, sorta, but the reader
> doesn't zoom and can't display the whole page at once.
> Have to take 4 pictures and stitch them together.
> Takes a long time and quality is poor.
>
> I bought a Tamron Fotovix TF60WU. The concept is
> right, the zoom is adequate, but the video output
> resolution is woefully insufficient.
>
> What's a cheap, like zero is cheap, method to get
> digital images of tiny stuff? I have a 2MP camera,
> Kodak DC280,
> I could dedicate to the project, but the darn lens
> moves in and out. Can't figure out how I can hook anything
> to it. I'm gonna need at least one more lens to get
> close enough focus.
>
> I have a stereo inspection microscope that could do the
> job, but again, can't figure out how to get the
> camera attached to it with the moving lens assembly.
>
> Experimented with a flatbed scanner with extremely poor results.
>
> I have a large amount of fiche, so it's impractical to
> convert it before I need it. Whatever I do won't be used
> much, if ever, so needs to be cheap.

The film is narrower than 35mm. half an inch would be even less than
16mm so theoretically you could run two fiches side by side through a
continuous slide scanner like the PrimeFilm 1800
<http://www.scanace.com/en/product/product.php>
Setting the scan to monochrome should speed things up a bit.
I have scanned 16mm and 110 film with the PrimeFilm and although it
needed work with cropping and rotation, it did do a pretty good job.
Sharpening would probably be necessary too.

Most of the fiches are text and diagrams, I guess?

mike <> writes:
> I have a large amount of fiche, so it's impractical to
> convert it before I need it. Whatever I do won't be used
> much, if ever, so needs to be cheap.

Try reversing a junky old 35mm SLR camera lens (10-20 bucks or so on
ebay depending) in front of your DC280 lens, to use as a close-up
magnifier. You may need some kind of adapter to mount accessories
(filters) on the camera. Check if one is available. You'll also need
a reversing ring, around 5 bucks at camera-filters.com. Use a
mid-wideangle lens like a 28mm, make sure you have some way to keep
the aperture wide open, maybe by putting a blob of glue on it (since
you're not going to mount it on an SLR anyway).

I will guess that the DC280's zoom is around 7-15mm (they do the thing
of stating it as "30-60" as if it were a 35mm film camera, instead of
giving the actual focal length). You want to zoom it out to full
telephoto which I'll assume is 15mm. Putting a 28mm lens in front of
it should put the infinity focus at 28mm and thus give you around 1:2
magnification at the sensor, if I got that right. The sensor should
be about 5x7 mm, so that means 14mm of microfiche will fill the frame.
If that's not enough magnification, you might look for a digicam with
a longer zoom.

If you have a cheap 10x magnifying loupe you could try shooting
through that to see what the effect is like, but the quality will be
lousy compared with using a camera lens.