SMD Passives Storage: Work in Haste, Repent at Leisure

All of these things are too small for me to handle or even see.

As you get older you will understand.

DAB AAAAA-MEN!!   Thank goodness for zoom of the phone camera.  I use it as a magnifying glass all the time.

We have a little meet-up every year at Xmas, and it's getting to the point where friends I've grown up with are searching around for their glasses to read the menu. It's a new experience, wish it wasn't the case but it happens to us all. I have to use a head-magnifier while soldering tiny stuff. I had already decided that this Xmas my little gift to a couple of friends might actually be a pocket magnifying glass!

shabaz said:

I had already decided that this Xmas my little gift to a couple of friends might actually be a pocket magnifying glass!

You could be mistaken for a murder mystery enthusiast group if everyone pulls out their magnifying glasses at the same time

I picked up this Carson pocket magnifier recently:

Slide-Open Magnifier 4x Power
https://www.carson.com/product/gn-11-en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y_6zNp8Z5Y

shabaz Here's my soldering "head magnifier".   3x "cheaters" plus the regular glasses.

I like the style! There's a kids TV character famous for the multiple glasses too : ) Also, you've answered the unspoken question that the glasses can indeed actually work like that!!

Carson stuff is great! Low or reasonable prices usually, and excellent image quality compared to magnifiers many times the cost from other manufacturers. They seem to excel with their aspheric plastic magnifiers.

I just picked this Carson gadget up, called Carson LT-10, it was £10 from Amazon. 

Turns out, it's excellent for reading part markings, especially on ICs. There's a built-in light, but it's at an angle, so the part marking is very clear to read without glare, when the magnifier is placed flat on top of the PCB. There's a greased focusing ring too.

For inspecting SMD solder joints, I tried stretching it out into this sort of shape shown below, and then it is possible to hold it in the air at an angle, to see SOIC/TSSOP/QFN soldering from the side, and the light still hits the PCB! The image is flat and undistorted, and although you're supposed to put your eye close to the magnifier, in practice if you like, you can hold your head about 3 inches away from the magnifier lens (and the lens will be about 1 inch away from the PCB). 

It's very compact. And the case quality is not bad either, for the price. Feels tough and small enough that you could comfortably put this in a pocket too.

I'm actually astonished how good it is.

 shabaz why toss the money away I have a Carlson !0x  LumiLoupe. I've had it for years. I Picked it up from my photo store when I messed about with 35mm negs and slides! ~~ Cris H

These are great for photography, but you have no room to do anything. With the folding one, you 'd be able to reach under it with tweezers, a toothpick, maybe a micro soldering iron ... 

Nice, I can imagine the image quality of that one is good too. The folding gadget LT-10 performs in a similar way to the one you mention, i.e. both are loupes with similar-ish magnification, and prices are approximately the same here for both models.

I generally have a couple of problems with that style one though (but this won't apply to everyone). One is the problem that Jan describes, and for me the need is that frequently I want to look at a soldered IC at an angle rather than end-on, so the base would need to be unscrewed (if that is possible) and then just held in the air (unless the loupe works OK at a slightly longer distance than the base too).

The other is that I often just work in home-lighting levels and the desk-lamp might not be nearby, so I nearly always try to use a magnifier with built-in light. That brings the problem that a lot of magnifiers have badly positioned LEDs!  Several of the Carson magnifiers have great LED positioning however.