Hi everybody
A few years ago, my friend Salvi Carracuel , a Spanish engraver who lives in Malaga (Spain) made me a gift : a Neolucida, sort of camera lucida used by artists for drawing after a model.
It’s not easy to use it directly for engraving with a burin instead drawing with pencil . Transfering a printed image is much easier.
But this camera lucida principle give me an idea for displaying under the scope the image of the model I’m trying to engrave.
Until now I was printing my model at a large scale( A4) and put this image near my scope. I always remove my glasses while engraving , and when I need to look at my model, I have to put the glasses on , and to remove them when turning back to the scope.
Having the image on the field of the microscope may be more convenient. This is useful specially when you’re engraving with bulino techniques . I’m using a scope with a zoom, and a 0,63 Barlow lens. At the lower magnification the field has room enough to display the model and the engraving.
Here is the set up : the image is first mirrored and reversed on my phone.
The phone is placed vertical, parallel to the scope, and the screen is reflected to the objective of the scope by means of a mirror leaned at 45°.
The distance between the phone and the mirror+ distance between mirror and the objective, must be equal to the working distance of the scope. That allows to focus the scope both on the phone screen and the working piece.
The small mirror is mounted on an axis.
If I need to use the entire field I can turn the mirror down and the scope will recover a normal field.
The mirror is a bit special : the reflective coating is over the glass , and not under the glass like usually. It's one of the mirrors I’ve used for building telescopes : Astronomy is another hobby. You can found this kind of mirrors on old scanners or photocopiers.
Voilà,Thank You for your interest on the Camera Lucida, I hope you'll enjoy it
A few years ago, my friend Salvi Carracuel , a Spanish engraver who lives in Malaga (Spain) made me a gift : a Neolucida, sort of camera lucida used by artists for drawing after a model.
It’s not easy to use it directly for engraving with a burin instead drawing with pencil . Transfering a printed image is much easier.
But this camera lucida principle give me an idea for displaying under the scope the image of the model I’m trying to engrave.
Until now I was printing my model at a large scale( A4) and put this image near my scope. I always remove my glasses while engraving , and when I need to look at my model, I have to put the glasses on , and to remove them when turning back to the scope.
Having the image on the field of the microscope may be more convenient. This is useful specially when you’re engraving with bulino techniques . I’m using a scope with a zoom, and a 0,63 Barlow lens. At the lower magnification the field has room enough to display the model and the engraving.
Here is the set up : the image is first mirrored and reversed on my phone.
The phone is placed vertical, parallel to the scope, and the screen is reflected to the objective of the scope by means of a mirror leaned at 45°.
The distance between the phone and the mirror+ distance between mirror and the objective, must be equal to the working distance of the scope. That allows to focus the scope both on the phone screen and the working piece.
The small mirror is mounted on an axis.
If I need to use the entire field I can turn the mirror down and the scope will recover a normal field.
The mirror is a bit special : the reflective coating is over the glass , and not under the glass like usually. It's one of the mirrors I’ve used for building telescopes : Astronomy is another hobby. You can found this kind of mirrors on old scanners or photocopiers.
Voilà,Thank You for your interest on the Camera Lucida, I hope you'll enjoy it
I did a few tries with prisms and various semi-mirrors.
