best camera for macro, video, low light?

i am an electronics engineer and I need a camera for R&D work. it
needs to take video @ 30fps without skipping, with sound, and have
fantastic macro abilities, the closer the better, I can make use of
microscope-closeness, and work very well in low light. whats the best
camera for this?

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i am an electronics engineer and I need a camera for R&D work. it
needs to take video @ 30fps without skipping, with sound, and have
fantastic macro abilities, the closer the better, I can make use of
microscope-closeness, and work very well in low light. whats the best
camera for this?


The camera you are looking for does not exist.



Low light performance:



Good low light performance requires an image sensor with large photo sites
for physical reasons, resulting in an overall large sensor. These are used
in DSLR's (there is also the non - SLR Sony DSC-R1). Common to this class of
camera is that they do not have a video recording capability.



Video:

If video record capability is a must, you can only choose between different
compact models. All of these have a comparatively poor signal / noise margin
at low light / high ISO settings. All have non - exchangeable lenses.



If there aren't too fast movements to record, the usual MPEG 4 video
compression will work quite well.



Macro Mode:



The compacts with the closest Macro Focus I know allow focusing down to 1 cm
and are made by Ricoh / Japan, In the US they are unfortunately only
obtainable from specialized importers and not supported by Ricoh USA. That
will however not give the scaling you are looking for.



I have been using the following arrangement for similar scale macro
photography: A Panasonic DMC - FZ 50 compact camera with an old 50 mm / F
1.4 (analog) SLR - lens mounted in inverted position on the front lens (50
mm = 20 Diopters) using a male - male adapter ring. The same trick should
work with wide angle lenses, giving greater magnification but I have not
tried it.



There is about 3 cm spacing between the target and the (originally back)
lens. I get vignetting below equivalent focal length settings of about 250
mm and can vary between that and the maximum 420 mm to control scaling. At
420 mm an object of about 5 * 6 mm fills the frame.



Problems a Even lighting of the object is difficult. I use a homebrew
illuminator (20 ultra bright white Led's epoxy glued to a piece of PVC tube
fitting around the "macro lens" and bent to focus on the target). I need to
do manual white balance with this.



Adjusting the camera position is also not easy. You need a fine adjustable
mechanical support for the camera. Auto focus works, but only when the
camera is in about 1 mm of the focusing plane. Depth of field is low, as you
probably already know.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:23:10 +0100, "cgiorgio" wrote:

The compacts with the closest Macro Focus I know allow focusing down to 1 cm
and are made by Ricoh / Japan, In the US they are unfortunately only
obtainable from specialized importers and not supported by Ricoh USA. That
will however not give the scaling you are looking for.

What about the S2IS, and the S3IS; 0 cm.

--
John McCain said Friday the
personal lives of candidates
ought to be off-limits in the
campaign. He shouldn't be
ashamed that he married his
second wife a month after his
divorce. She's the heir to a
beer distributorship and that
kind of woman doesn't come
along every week.

"Bill Funk" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:23:10 +0100, "cgiorgio" wrote:


What about the S2IS, and the S3IS; 0 cm.

Very useful for transparent, back lighted objects.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:06:05 +0100, "cgiorgio" wrote:


"Bill Funk" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
.. .
On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:23:10 +0100, "cgiorgio" wrote:


What about the S2IS, and the S3IS; 0 cm.

Very useful for transparent, back lighted objects.


Very funny! :-)
You said the only camera that you knew of that would focus down to 1
cm were made by Rocoh; I said the S2IS and S3IS would.
Guess what? They will also focus to 1 cm.

--
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
faced anger in Congress this week
over illegal wiretapping. He forced
banks and phone companies to give
up private records of American
citizens without a warrant. At
least Richard Nixon had the decency
to use burglars.