Tiny Tuesday: Print Head Macro

Regular followers of my blip journal will know that I'm always intrigued by the detail which can show up on macro photos. And also that I'm a self-confessed geek (and not ashamed thereof!).

Anyway, a few months ago I had to replace the print head on my inkjet printer as some of the colours stopped working and extensive cleaning attempts were unsuccessful. Since then the old one has been lying around waiting for me to take it apart to try to investigate how it works.

Well I've not done that yet, but my eyes fell upon it as I pondered what to photograph for today's TT challenge (hosted by JDO - many thanks Jill!).

I started by just taking a standard macro of the active section of the printhead (which is what you see in the inset in the bottom right corner). But then I got out my extension tubes and set the Olympus on high-res mode, which cleverly uses the 20MP sensor to produce a 50MP image - in order to get the best detail possible.  A bit of sharpening and cropping produced the main part of the image. The intricacy of the design amazes me - I've even more respect for modern printers than I had before.

I included the inset to give scale to the main image, which you can see is only a section of what you see in the inset, which itself is only just over 1cm across.

(Note: For the high res shot, I used my air blower and a fine brush to try to get rid of the dust, but some still remained.)