ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: Reader Mark Martin emails with a question about the camera I’ve been using lately:

Quick question, Professor Reynolds….

I need a camera that makes good photographs of small things—for me, bacterial colonies on a petri plates (which are about a millimeter or so in diameter). I noticed that you have been doing some “macro” photography with your Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T10 camera. How detailed CAN you get with small objects, with that camera?

It’s one thing to read reviews. You tend to SHOW what you can do with a camera, which I find valuable.

I’ll understand if you have too much on your plate to answer. If you could show off the macro abilities of your Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T10 camera in a post, I would really appreciate it.

Here it is — this is a dime, which more than fills the frame on the “macro” setting, uncropped.

Hope that helps. And yeah, the dime’s kind of boring, but I didn’t have time to do any Rick Lee -style produce-blogging.

UPDATE: Several readers also point out that you can get a USB digital microscope surprisingly cheap.