I have a magneto optic sensor that can visualise the field lines of a magstripe when using a polarising microscope - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8nM4Z-hkTw

I'm going to try a VHS under it, to see what I get.

Please do share if this succeeded :)

Based on a repo I found that twiddled the memory bus, I transmitted audio from a wav file via Pulse Density Modulation - https://github.com/anfractuosity/musicplayer

If you PWM a signal, I presume you could add a filter to convert to amplitude changes?

I skimmed through a couple of youtube videos, would I be right in thinking the tracing is done always manually here.

Would be really neat if it could trace automagically too, possibly with sanded PCBs?

Wow that printer is fascinating!

Good point re. film, related to that see - https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/

Thanks! I came across http://www.pocketwatchrepair.com/how-to/jewels.php recently, hadn't realised the jewels weren't for aesthetics.

You can apparently lock shopping trolleys using the same kind of principle - https://www.tmplab.org/2008/06/18/consumer-b-gone/

And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmSyb0kBvGE

He kind of buried the lede, there's another MP3 to unlock them.

Another 3D printed microscope https://github.com/TadPath/PUMA looks very interesting too.

Thought that podcast was very interesting. I bought the book - 'textbook of sake brewing' a while ago. I've brewed beer before, but rather fancy trying making sake.

I remember speaking to ALPA at a photo show, from what I recall the cameras also have very fine metal shims to align the camera to a digital back.

Do they manufacture the optics themselves too? Not sure I realised that.

Edit: just found this "ALPA cooperates with the acknowledged best manufacturers of large format lenses"