USB CMOS Cameras .... Any good?

Cactusdave · Post by **Cactusdave** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 5:10 am

Hi. I'm new here and this is my first post. I am an ex-professional microscopist living near London in the UK. I have three microscopes; a black Leitz Ortholux 1 for which I have brightfield and also the Ultropak incident light accessory; a Zeiss Standard 12 with phase condenser and a set of phase neofluars. This microscope sadly is only a binocular and I could do with a trinocular head. I also have a big old beast of a Nikon Diaphot 200 inverted which has the LWD condenser with X10 and X40 DIC and X20 phase plus the appropriate Nikon objectives. I also have a couple of stereos; a Nikon SMZ 1 that needs a stand and a Leica stereozoom 2000 that unfortunately is the version with fixed 'student-proof' eyepieces. A bad Ebay purchase through not having done my homework

. I have a couple of Canon DSLRs, a 40D and 400D which I use for bird and wild life photography as well as photomicrography, and also a Canon G9 which is used mostly on the microscopes.
Now to my question. I notice that the price of CMOS USB cameras has dropped a lot lately and a range are available on Ebay and through specialist outlets in the $200-600 range or the stirling equivalent, which would be my budget. I wonder if any of them are any good for video capture especially, and still capture. How would they perform in comparison with a DSLR or the G9 which have limited videoclip facilities? Apologies if this has been asked before but I couldn't locate a relevant thread with 'search'.
Also my microscopes are all pre-infinity optics relics, so the issue of CA and non-compensating coupling optics rears its head. I would be interested on views as to how big a problem this is in this case, and more generally. Thanks for your patience.

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Tue Jul 21, 2009 4:39 pm

Greetings....
I've kept an eye on this, your first post, and see that you have not gotten a reply. This is the sort of question that, unless one has tried the equipment in question there's not much to offer in reply.

But there is a user over in the microscope section, Olivier Barth, who has posted many excellent images using a 3Mp eyepiece camera. Don't know if he ever looks over here. I suspect he would be delighted to share his experiences with you if you contacted him via a private message.

Also my microscopes are all pre-infinity optics relics, so the issue of CA and non-compensating coupling optics rears its head.

Yes. And the degree to which this manifest's itself can vary greatly, and people's tolerance of this varies as well. Probably less noticeable an issue with video than stills.

Ted Clark has written a great deal about this. Here are a few of his articles.

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/ind ... tccdm.html

http://www.modernmicroscopy.com/main.asp?article=32

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/ind ... scope.html

Cactusdave · Post by **Cactusdave** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 1:48 pm

Thanks Charles. Very helpful links. I was aware of these issues with Zeiss and LOMO objectives particularly apos and planapos needing compensating eyepieces (and photorelay optics). I believe pre-infinity tube length microscopes from Leitz and Nikon also carried out correction for chromatic aberration in the eyepiece rather than the objective.

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:18 am

I believe that, with one exception, all of the older "finite" systems corrected for CA in the eyepieces for at least some of their objectives. The exception would be Nikon's CF which were introduced in 1976.

In the newer "infinity" scopes I think (but not 100% sure) Zeiss and Leica still do some color correction in the tube lens, while Nikon and Olympus (most recent) do not.

Leif · Post by **Leif** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 4:06 am

Some of these cameras have a built in lens. Others attach to a C mount and allow you to use your own optic. So presumably you can use a suitable projection lens that is compatible with your own microscope.

The quality of the Scope Tek DCM510 unit is okay, at least on an infinity optics microscope. I have found that there are strange artifacts, which are in the slide and not the camera, possibly due to differences in DOF when using the Chinese CMOS camera compared to a DSLR. The main problem is the ##### software. (The word is appropriate.) This makes it very hard to get good white balance and exposure. And the manual stinks. MICAM is shareware, and far far better, except it does not work on my PC as it fails to write output files ...

g4lab · Post by **g4lab** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 6:11 am

I have some acquaintances on other fora who have tried some of the cheap ebay cameras and been very unsatisfied. There are probably different units with differing quality control and software.

You probably would do fine with a camera with the Motic brand on it but these will cost quite a bit more than the no name ones on ebay.

I have a Motic video capture card and the software and manual are excellent and the unit came with two calibration stage micrometers which I believe the cameras do to. This is a pretty good sign as far as professionalism is concerned. One of my acquaintances uses a Motic 5 megapixel camera which he bought when they first came out for a fairly large chunk of money. But he has been using it on a Bausch and Lomb StereoZoom Seven with a photo attachment and I think he is still pretty happy with it. He has used it heavily.

There is a similar outfit from Chicago called Pax It I think. Also more than the ebay no names but with extensive software options and their own C mount camera.

René · Post by **René** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 1:56 pm

I've bought 10 Tucsen cmount cmos cameras for the lab, they do very well in our setting. Price of 180 euros for a 3Mp. But I've bought proper adapters for them which were about twice that price. Forget about the cheapo eyepiece adapter, that's bad. If you check www.tecmon.de, the guy has several test reports (in german, however).
The image of the tucsen is slightly noisy, comparable to the noise in my old Coolpix 990. And apparently also like the cheaper Axiocams (but still in the thousands), so it can't be really bad.
Personally I would go through the trouble of converting a dSLR, but for lab use we'll stick to the tucsen.

HTH, René.

Stevie · Post by **Stevie** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 1:26 am

Another option would be one of these .
http://www.theimagingsource.com/en_US/products/cameras/
These camera's are popular among astrophotographers .
They are available for use with usb , firewire and Gigabyt ethernet with or without IR blocking filter and the can record in uncompressed avi .