Taking pictures of circuit boards.

Hi,

I am not a photographer by any means, we do have a web business selling circuit boards and take anywhere from 50-200 photos every day, 5 days a week.

We have come a long way in improving our photos, but I still want better photos with more details, clearer, etc.

We cannot afford a $5000 digital camera so we are stuck with the D5100 that we have.

We have it in a light booth, mounted on a tripod and tethered to light room 5.

My question is, does anyone see anything we could be doing better? Right now we use a 18 to 55 lens that came with the camera. I have been told we might want a macro lens? But then which one?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some examples of our photos:
Magnavox 37MF321D 37 Power Supply 313815868291 | eBay
Sanyo DP50747 x Sustain Board BN96 06518A LJ92 01398A | eBay
Hitachi P50S601 I R Sensor JA08234 E | eBay

Thanks!
Tim

I don't think you need a macro lense. If taking a shot of a certain part on the circuit board then yes you would most likely benefit from a macro lense. What aperture settings are you using? Looks like the DOF is pretty shallow and focusing on a part closest to the camera, the board itself will be soft.

You could try upping your f stop as mentioned to increase depth of field. But also try backing up which also will give more depth of field. You have plenty of mega pixels to crop the picture after wards. Try F8 or so and back away and you should be able to get the tops of the components sharp as well as the silk screening on the board.

For some reason they look really dark to me.I know the light booth is supposed to help but I cant get over the fact that they look underexposed,just my two cents....

Try ring lighting.

Thank you for the replies so far. I will look at the camera tomorrow for the settings, when you say aperture, you mean the F# on the camera? (yes I know I just showed you how LITTLE I know about photography)

Also, as for light, yes I agree they are dark and I cant figure out why...we have 10 of the bulbs at the bottom of the post pointing into a booth that is 36" wide by 36" deep by 20" tall (if we are using the top shelf) or 36" tall if we have the top shelf out and using the bottom shelf for really big photos. I might also ad...in light room those pictures look nice and bright, for some reason when they are exported and put onto the web, they look darker than they do in light room, maybe its all in my head but they seem different?

The camera for all those photos would be about 18" away from the part and the two larger parts it was on around 30mm the small part (IR Sensor) would have been 55mm.




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I will get the settings off the camera and post tomorrow.

Thank you all for your help, we greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,
Tim

Yes, aperture is f stop. Higher number means smaller opening. More light required for exposure, but more depth of field (more in focus front to rear of subject) at the higher f number. You could move back a 2 or 3 feet which will give more depth of field and make sure that protruding components as well as the board are all sharp. In case you are not sure what I mean with depth of field, lets say you are focused at the board from 18" away. At a low f stop, your depth of field could be only a 1/2". So if you are focused on the top of a component, the surface of the board could be out of focus because you only have a 1/2" leeway for what will be in focus at that distance. Move back two feet and that depth will grow to near 2". Maybe this will help explain better than I can:
Online Depth of Field Calculator

I thought the ebay pictures were bright??? Maybe its my laptop, I get a huge variation depending how I angle my screen.

Circuit boards are often the perfect candidates for focus stacking. DaveW has a great tutorial on it in the Blog section (click on the "How To" category filter and it's easy to find).

I think you may want to investigate Focus Stacking. Take a look at this example from Helicon Remote.

The op is taking 50 to 200 shots a day, focus stacking might get cumbersome. As an electronics guy myself, I don't want to see a cool looking view from the side. I want to see a straight on flat view. I want to read any and all printing on the circuit board surface and compare parts layout, connector style, mounting holes, etc, to be sure it is an exact replacement or suitable substitute for my needs.

Thank you all again, you are very helpful.

Nickt said it right, I watched the video on focus stacking and unfortunately that would not be a suitable option, although its great, it just wont work for us with the amount of photos we need to take daily.

We do need the straight on "overhead" view of our parts. We want them to be an accurate representation of the item and allow our customers to read barcode stickers and silk screening as well as view components, holes, etc.


The F# we have been using is 7.1 if we change this, will it help?

Also, yes, the pictures do seem dark on some screens and not others, the overall consensus is that they could be brighter though if possible.

I like not having to buy a macro lens if possible, but am willing to spend the money if I have to. If you think I can fix this issue with simple settings then that is great!

Thanks again!
Tim

You could go higher on the f-stop. At some point going too high in f stop, your image will degrade. Not sure at what point for your lens is too high. How is your shutter speed? If you shutter speed is slow and your tripod is not so solid, you can get some shake when you take the picture. If that is a possibility, then get your shutter up to 1/100 or faster. Your shutter speed is probably fine, sounds like you have good light. Backing up to about 2 feet is my best suggestion. It adds an extra step of cropping your image, but it should insure all depths are in focus. Use iso 100. You could try manual focus. Focus on a mid-height component, so things a bit closer or farther are still in focus. Or focus on a particular detail that you know your customer needs to see.

I don't think you would do any better with a macro for these types of shots.

I forgot to mention... if you try manual focusing... you could use live view and use your zoom buttons to get a closer detail of what you are focusing on.

tvdrss said:

Hi,

I am not a photographer by any means, we do have a web business selling circuit boards and take anywhere from 50-200 photos every day, 5 days a week.

We have come a long way in improving our photos, but I still want better photos with more details, clearer, etc.

We cannot afford a $5000 digital camera so we are stuck with the D5100 that we have.

We have it in a light booth, mounted on a tripod and tethered to light room 5.

My question is, does anyone see anything we could be doing better? Right now we use a 18 to 55 lens that came with the camera. I have been told we might want a macro lens? But then which one?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some examples of our photos:
Magnavox 37MF321D 37 Power Supply 313815868291 | eBay
Sanyo DP50747 x Sustain Board BN96 06518A LJ92 01398A | eBay
Hitachi P50S601 I R Sensor JA08234 E | eBay

Thanks!
Tim

Click to expand...

Given what you are using the images for, what's actually wrong with what you have as they seem to show the product? I've done the focus stacking thing on a tiny circuit board as an academic exercise but I doubt if you need that kind of detail. I'm just not sure what look you're after that is highly repeatable.




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His pictures are very good for the purpose. I have seen some pretty horrible parts pictures on ebay. His one here Sanyo DP50747 x Sustain Board BN96 06518A LJ92 01398A | eBay is a little too blurry to read the small print on the board, but he could get that sharp by being mindful of depth of field and accurate focus.

tvdrss said:

Hi,

I am not a photographer by any means, we do have a web business selling circuit boards and take anywhere from 50-200 photos every day, 5 days a week.

We have come a long way in improving our photos, but I still want better photos with more details, clearer, etc.

We cannot afford a $5000 digital camera so we are stuck with the D5100 that we have.

We have it in a light booth, mounted on a tripod and tethered to light room 5.

My question is, does anyone see anything we could be doing better? Right now we use a 18 to 55 lens that came with the camera. I have been told we might want a macro lens? But then which one?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some examples of our photos:
Magnavox 37MF321D 37 Power Supply 313815868291 | eBay
Sanyo DP50747 x Sustain Board BN96 06518A LJ92 01398A | eBay
Hitachi P50S601 I R Sensor JA08234 E | eBay

Thanks!
Tim

Click to expand...

Those photos are fine; quite good, actually. Exposure is spot on, focus is very sharp and zooming in tells me everything a picture could about a circuit board. You could spend more money, maybe get a better lens, but you're not going to see a huge, jaw dropping improvement over what you have now.

....

One thing I have not heard asked is if you are shooting in RAW or JPEG. JPEG would probably work fine for what you are doing just make sure it is JPEG Fine. Also make sure the Sharpening is set in the camera. The factory setting is quite low.
Goto the menu

• Shooting Menu
• Set Picture Control>(Right Arrow)
• Standard>(Right Arrow)
• Sharpening(increase to at least 7)

The arrow is the round ring around the "OK" button on the back of the camera

This one thing will help your shots more than almost anything else.

Thank you all again for your assistance.

I agree with you that our pictures a fine, I just want them perfect. There is a large competitor in this market place and when I look at their pictures vs our pictures, there is no contest their pictures are 100 times better than ours.

I do believe though that the problem is the focus. What we want focused is the board level detail of the silk screening printed on the board. I would rather have the board in perfect focus and the tops of the components a little out of focus.

Question at this point is, is there a way to make auto focus focus on the board and not the highest point of the components? Doing manual focus would slow things down majorly.

Right now we are shooting in RAW which we were told gives us the most amount of adjustability in light room.

I will try adjusting the sharpness of the camera.

As for, how much post processing, we dont do much, we apply a filter we made to sharpen it up and brighten it a bit and then crop it.

Thanks,
Tim

Also...
Here is an example of my image vs competitor image.

Theirs just looks better to me, also, notice how pure white their the background on the edges of their board is? Mine is so dingy grey looking and I cant seem to get it better?

LG 32LN530B UA Ausyljm Main Unit EBR75172695 | eBay
I attached the competitors image in attachments.

Thanks,
Tim