137944 said:
I'm looking for a way to view small steel parts for defects. I now use microscopes, but do that all day. I need something other than dinolite to view these parts in a macro arena. I want to down load the micro view of my parts (real-time) on a monitor that's running directly from the camera. And of course I'm on a tight budget (under $700.)
Any ideas?
Hi 137944 - the Nikon 5200 will send clean HDMI to your monitor in Live View, and you can get a
new body for $478 - but it will be a challenge to find a high quality macro lens for less than the
$258 40mm f2.8G Micro-Nikkor.
That will put you a little over $700, but will give you a very high quality real-time view of your parts. And you can record that view to the camera's SD card simultaneously.
Another option is the
$404 (on sale, as of this post) Panasonic FZ200. It's a great low-light superzoom camera with a macro lens that can produce closeup images like
this.
You can access HDMI live view using the method demonstrated by Graham Houghton in the video below:
http://youtu.be/wbpB4p2lYdE?t=6m44s
Hope that's helpful,
Bill