Hi subolog,
Today I had the chance to test the Tagarno FHD ZIP for a few hours.
Short story, a great tool, but not 2500eur great (which it costs here).
My application is SMD rework, largish components, 0.4 and 0.5mm QFN, 0603, that sort of stuff, so that's what I tested it with.
First impressions were really good. The image looks great on a large screen, the zoom is astounding. Autofocus and auto exposure controls work fine in normal situations.
Good points:
Fantastic working distance, does not get in the way. You can seamlessly look down on your work or up on the screen.
Nice image.
You can show stuff to others.
Fantastic zoom range.
You can use the monitor for other stuff on your bench if you connect it to a computer too.
Bad points:
Stand lacks height adjustment. The long working distance does not allow very high work (50mm) on all zoom levels, or at least the auto focus will not work, manual has a greater range.
Mediocre build/design quality of the stand. I mean it is not bad, but I could do better and I am not a mechanical engineer. The connectors on the side (bad place) for HDMI and USB are just SMD PCB connectors placed on the PCB edge. You can see the PCB and the cutout in the case is much larger than the connectors. When you fold the stand back and hit something with the connectors you will definitely rip the sockets from the board.
The cables sticking out on the side will prevent you from folding the camera back next to other lab gear on a crowded bench. The hinges are not all that well made, you can see into the extrusions and look at exposed electronics. The screw at the top hinge that locks the unit in the upright position looks like an afterthought, probably was to firm things up, the thread was already showing signs of wear on my demo unit.
The stand can _only_ fold back and down, so you need space behind the unit to fold it away. You can't fold it up or anything. You can however tilt the horizontal arm down without folding the vertical arm back.
Lack of 3D vision. This is the biggie compared to a Mantis. You will not see things like raised solder points nearly as well as on a stereo microscope. Manipulation is not too difficult without stereo vision (try working with one eye, no problem) but just ever so slightly more tricky.
Picture quality. While very good for a digital microscope nowhere near an optical instrument. The weakness does not show on good contrast scenes, but when it gets tricky such as solder joints dirty with flux you just do not see as well. Even the chinese cheapy ebay special stereo microscope I had on hand as a reference had just slightly better optical quality.
At close to maximum zoom you start to see the image quality degrade. There were some very minor optical abberations (purple edges) which I did not like.
The autofocus got stuck three times with just blur on the screen, and the object completely covering the field of view with nothing in the way. It would start to work again as I moved the object in and out. The autofocus did work fine much of the time, but it is not super fast. Got annoying after a while to wait for focus.
Auto exposure is slightly too bright for my liking, the solder joints were always a bit too reflective under any light conditions. I know solder is a difficult object, but it's what I have to look at. A step or two darker on manual exposure worked better for me.
Observations:
The lens (standard comes with x4) is a Japanese photography lens, 58mm thread or thereabouts if I recall right. Directly behind the screw-on lens is another non-removeable lens. Through that you can see another smaller lens on a carrier which moves in and out as you zoom.
Recording in Windows 8 with the camera app did not work. I believe it is a problem with my computer.
Magnification in hex. I don't consider it a negative, but it goes with the slightly unfinished feel of the unit.
I don't want to give the impression that this is a bad unit, even if I focused on the negative points. But at this price point you deserve a _perfect_ tool, or close to. The positive features are really as good as you imagine anyway I don't have to describe them ;-).
It would be a great deal at $500, and OK at $1500, but $3000 is too much for what it is.
I will order the Mantis now, it really blows you away.
I hope I listed the main points, feel free to ask any questions.
ST