Tiny Tuesday: TINY!!

Dbifulco (thanks Debbi) wants us to post a photo of something really tiny this week.

If you're in a camera club, you probably know that competition judges want everything "PIN sharp". But what does a pin really look like? - is it really all that sharp?

So I took a macro photo of a standard dressmaker's pin using my macro lens with the extension tubes - the result is on the left of this diptych. It shows that the tip of the pin isn't actually particularly sharp.

Then I pointed the camera at the same pin down my childhood toy microscope. As you can see, the optics are pretty mucky and I can't get them any cleaner - sorry. But you can see the tip of the pin. It's certainly not really very sharp at 200 times magnification, is it?

So next time a judge says my photo isn't "pin sharp", I may be inclined to challenge them that pins aren't really very sharp, so what are they worried about...!  ;-)))