Tag Archives: gear

Macro Rings and Test Shots

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I’ve been into photography for many many years. A long time back, when I first started, I acquired a macro lens. This was essentially a regular lens but with an adjustable bellows on it. I have not had any kind of macro lens since then, and now that I’m getting back into documenting some of the work that I’m doing in electronics, I decided to “spring” for a set of macro rings:

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And this is what they look like attached to a lens:

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(you can use any lens; the focal length of the lens used will make a difference on the magnification that you end up getting)

And a couple of test shots I took with the rings:

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HP8642B Signal Generator Mod

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A quick mod post here. I saw this post by Kerry Wong, and having the same hardware myself (and finding the backlight ridiculously dim) I thought this mod was a great idea and wanted to try it myself. First, here is a shot of the original backlight:

HP8642B-OrigBL

I pulled the front panel apart, and decided to use white SMD LEDs for my replacement mod:

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After soldering up everything and reassembling (and of course cursing a lot due to the number of defective white LEDs that I didn’t realize that I had), the result is beautiful!

 

HP8642B-Mod

And here is the same Easter egg that Kerry found (hold down the MSSG key while powering on the unit):

HP8642B-ModBL1

 

New Power Supply

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One can never have enough power, and in even a small hobbyist electronics lab, one needs at least 2 supplies (to generate both positive and negative voltages simultaneously). The Power Designs supply that I first bought I liked a lot: fairly cheap on Ebay (~75$ shipped), 0 to 60V linear range (no range switching), has a max load of double its rated load and has a current limiting feature (important so as not to break your awesome devices under test!).

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