Macro photgraphy

Hi All

I am a complete novice so excuse my ignorance. I am wanting to get data off old microfiche's . If you never seen a microfiche they are a film card that used to be used for storing manuals , birth/death records and newspapers

here is a picture:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...fiche_card.JPG

Wikipedia explains them as

Quote:

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A microfiche is a flat film 105 x 148 mm in size, that is ISO A6. It carries a matrix of micro images. All microfiche are read with text parallel to the long side of the fiche. Frames may be landscape or portrait. Along the top of the fiche a title may be recorded for visual identification. The most commonly used format is a portrait image of about 10 x 14 mm. Office size papers or magazine pages require a reduction of 24 or 25. Microfiche are stored in open top envelopes which are put in drawers or boxes as file cards, or fitted into pockets in purpose made books.

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Mostly the stuff I want to photograph is 48x reduced but can be as high as 72x.

I have no camera or equipment. I am wondering if someone could advise me if this is possible and if so what equipment I would need.


Thanks in advance
Paul

Welcome to the Forum Paul. I haven't seen microfiche used in a while. My first thought on this since you said you have no camera equipment was, maybe you don't need any. Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to use a flatbed scanner to scan the microfiche at a very high resolution. A decent scanner could be had for a lot less than a good macro photography set up.

This seems to be a good idea. Faster too. A decent macro set up means a dslr body (several hundred if not over $1000), a macro lens (again several hundred dollars), and a good lighting set up, in this case probably a light table.

Hi guys

Thanks for the reply's. I have tried the scanner idea but its more like the picture above, an overview of the sheet. What I am looking for is to take a picture of each page .

I found a commercial machine on eBay that does this but the manufacturer doesn't give to much about which lens they use.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5uiMLT2VwI

They seem to use a CCD type camera . and is listed as a 2300 x 3500 pixels.

http://www.gosmicro.com.au/Product/DRS-Digitizer.pdf


Any idea what these guys are using ?

Thanks
Paul

You will need a bellows attachment to get the magnification needed to record a usable resolution, and depending on your cameras resolution you may have to take multiple exposures per page.

Check second hand office supply stores for used micro-fish readers, much cheaper than messing with micro-photography to print a copy of the contents of the micro-fish.