Taking a picture of a PCB is easy, taking a professionally looking one is a bit harder. So Martijn Braam overengineers this.

Pictures of boards are everywhere when you work in IT. Lots of computer components come as (partially) bare PCBs and single board computers are also a popular target. Taking a clear picture of a PCB is not trivial though. I suspect a lot of these product pictures are actually 3d renders.

While updating hackerboards I noticed not all boards have great pictures available. I have some of them laying around and I have a camera… how hard could it be?

To create a great picture I’ve decided to make a better setup. I’ve used several components for this. The most important one is two external flashes controlled with a wireless transmitter. I’ve added softboxes to the flashers to minimize the sharp shadows usually created when using a flash. This produces quite nice board pictures with even lighting.

It’s possible to get even less shadows on the board by using something like a ring light, while this gets slightly more clarity I also find this just makes the pictures less aesthetically pleasing.

Read more in the post here.