Cant take photos thru the scope with new camera :(

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:08 pm

Ahhh okay. I used to use a Canon micro unit "F" on the Nikon microscope but what I didn't use was an eye piece. Then used the FZ10 digital zoom to get rid of the vignetting. Thats the difference. Just sent a PM your way and then see this, Murphy's Law huh

The other way I used it was to take off the prism base and tube and had a Canon mount that the FZ10 just sat on. That worked as well. All those might be optically incorrect, but they worked.

I'm sure I've got some shots of the setups somewhere, I'll try and dig those out.

Danny.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:09 pm

Found some VERY OLD pages I did years ago for the Sony CD1000. Would apply exactly to the Panasonic series as well. So just threw this up about 5 mins ago

I'm sure some will say its incorrect but I worry about the results and not really how they get there. Just a me thing. So you are far better off following Frez, Rik, Charlie, Ken, etc for sure. They leave me in awe with what they do and take. Anyway, this is how I went about it ........awwww, years ago.

http://www.macrophotos.com/mm/micro2.htm

It certainly won't be linked from anywhere else, because this is not exactly how I would go about it now, but at the time, it worked when digital cameras were just a new idea.

PS: BTW, those shots were taken with an Olympus 1/4 megapixel camera

All the best as always.

Danny.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:51 am

nzmacro wrote:I'm sure some will say its incorrect but I worry about the results and not really how they get there.

I love unusual setups that produce good results. They often make great learning opportunities, 'cuz I do puzzle over how the results get there. (Hey Danny, remember that odd combination of telephoto lens and teleconverter that turned out to make a Galilean telescope? That was a fun chase!)

On Danny's page, the setups at top and bottom make sense to me if I assume that the Canon microscope adapter "f" contains lenses that match the exit pupil of the eyepiece to the entrance pupil of the camera lens. No problem there.

But that setup in the middle has me baffled. With all the equipment I know, putting a camera at the position shown -- several inches above the objective with no other optics except the regular camera lens -- would result in severe vignetting because the lens of the objective would occupy such a small part of the camera's field of view.

The only way I can make sense of the middle setup is to assume that either 1) the camera has a huge long zoom setting that can make its field width match the objective's width, or 2) the camera has a very close focus setting that allows it to work like an eyepiece does -- focusing on a real image cast by the objective. But in a quick scan of old reviews of the CD1000, the zoom doesn't look long enough or the macro short enough to make either of those work. So I don't know what's going on.

I trust Danny's report that it worked with that camera, but whether it would work with another camera is anybody's guess.

--Rik

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:17 am

the camera has a huge long zoom setting that can make its field width match the objective's width

Thats bang on the button Rik. The CD1000 has a 10x optical zoom. 35-350mm. So using up to the full digital zoom @ 20x, its 700mm. Vignetting occurs up to around 12 - 15x digital zoom. After that the vignetting is gone. Rik knows and has seen why I like and use digital zoom, so its something I've never been worried about using. I'll dig out a few shots since I've found where they are.

With the smaller Ccd's we are once again just cropping into part of the image with digital zoom and it does increase noise, but with the algorithm's used on both the Sony and the Panasonics, its better than doing the crop with software. Sony is better at it than most for noise reduction........IMO.

Anyway, bang on Rik, thats exactly why it works with the larger zoom lenses like the Panasonics FZ series.

Danny.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:29 pm

Found a few from that setup Rik and its like this with the CD1000 right above the objective. 1st shot = 10x optical (350mm), 2nd shot = 15x digital (525mm) 3 shot = 20x digital (700mm). No crops, full frame.

The Panasonics have far more digital zoom again than the Sony CD-1000. Virtually its like a zoom on the microscope. The focus of course is set at the stage, but the ratio can be decided by the zoom on the camera. More noise than a DSLR though. At the wide setting (35mm optical), the view is like looking down the barrel of gun, light at the end of a very long tunnel

, so we have to zoom into around 12x to avoid the vignetting.

All the best.

Danny.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:44 pm

Got it. Basically you're using a low-power microscope objective like a closeup lens. Put it as close as possible to the camera lens, by taking off most of the microscope, then zoom in to avoid vignetting. That works. It should work even better if you could get the objective closer to the camera. Bore a hole in a lens cover, for example, and thread the objective into that.

--Rik

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:51 pm

Yep, a good friend Charles Chien and a few others use microscope objectives on a bellows Rik with a DSLR. Excellent results for sure. You are probably one of a few that understand the reasons behind the need for digital zoom. Cropping in software just won't give you the same result and certainly won't give the quality of the ratio compared to digital zoom.

All the best and glad that makes sense M8t

Danny.

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 4:06 pm

Well i know that if you zoom you're only using the central part of the lens and so get a sharper pic-you're basically avoiding the edge of the lens where the abberations are.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 6:08 pm

nzmacro wrote:You are probably one of a few that understand the reasons behind the need for digital zoom. Cropping in software just won't give you the same result and certainly won't give the quality of the ratio compared to digital zoom.

Hhmm... Actually I don't remember coming to that conclusion. As I write this, I'm thinking that cropping in software will give you the same result as digital zoom...presuming of course that the camera doesn't mess up its JPEG compression or something so that pixels get corrupted. I'll have to go back and review previous discussions. If at some point I said that digital zoom was better, I wonder what I was looking at & thinking about.

--Rik

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:55 pm

Ha, you have forgotten about a page I showed you awhile back.

Take the first shot of the IC there. Could you get the same result as the last shot by cropping in software. Would you be able to read the numbers on the IC.

I already know the answer

.

The main problem in cropping with software compared to digital zoom, is that 90% of what I would take would be vignetted in just optical zoom. How do you actually crop a rectangular image from a round vignetted shot ??

A few thoughts anyway.

Danny.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:15 pm

nzmacro wrote:Ha, you have forgotten about a page I showed you awhile back.

You got that one right -- I have completely forgotten! Not a surprise -- I find myself reusing brain cells like crazy lately.

Can you perchance point me to the page again?

Take the first shot of the IC there. Could you get the same result as the last shot by cropping in software. Would you be able to read the numbers on the IC. I already know the answer .

I guess from the wink the answer must be "no", but it's completely unclear to me why that would be. Starting with the first shot at full camera resolution, and assuming that the camera doesn't do something to corrupt the pixels, then crop-and-resize in Photoshop should be able to do everything that "digital zoom" inside the camera can. After all (under those assumptions), Photoshop would have all the same data to work with, and a lot more time and processor resources. If it can't, then I'm very much inclined to suspect that the camera is not doing a good job of preserving all the image data into its output files.

The main problem in cropping with software compared to digital zoom, is that 90% of what I would take would be vignetted in just optical zoom.

Sure, I certainly don't disagree with the workflow advantages. If you need to crop and resize, and the camera does a good job with its digital zoom, then it would be crazy to not let it.

How do you actually crop a rectangular image from a round vignetted shot ??

Well, my first thought is to do it the same way the camera does -- just throw away all the pixels around the outside of the rectangle. But I guess I may have missed something. What is it?

--Rik

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:07 am

I think the problem is if your software is lossy when cropping,and I'm guessing that most of the time thats the case. Zooming on the other hand would be lossless?

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 9:00 am

I would be surprised if software like Photoshop introduced any significant loss in crop & resize. It's not hard to avoid, and there are compelling reasons for the software writers to produce the best images possible.

It's probably relevant that some cameras are notorious for heavily filtering their images, typically by applying lots of noise reduction in an attempt to hide sensor noise. This is one form of corrupting the pixels, and the effects can be pretty drastic to judge from what I've seen in some camera reviews. With such a camera, digital zoom could be a lot better than crop-and-resize in post-processing.

Danny reminded me offline of another advantage to digital zoom that I had once written about, but then forgotten -- it makes so much easier to see what you're shooting! Combine that with the workflow advantages and quality comparable to what you can get in post-processing, maybe better depending on the camera, and digital zoom starts looking really handy.

Digital zoom gives a lot less resolution, at least in theory, than true optical zoom to the same total magnification. But on the other hand, it's far from easy to design and fabricate extremely broad range zooms, and their performance isn't always the best anyway. That's why news-gathering TV cameras have those huge expensive chunks of glass stuck out front, and why you don't find similar lenses for 35mm. So digital zoom makes a nice way to fill some important niches.

--Rik

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 9:28 am

I'm gonna have to try this. Take a pic with the Panasonic then another zoomed in, and later cropped the unzoomed pic to the size of the cropped one.

Hmmm

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 1:04 pm

Ahh, its no exactly just cropping, resizing and then comparing. That sounds far to easy for us

. The Sony and the Panasonic do have better algorithms inbuilt into the camera software than what Photoshop, Photoimpact, etc can do with the resizing, etc. Simply they do, but not by much. Canon, Minolta, Pentax, don't have quite the same algorithms and do suffer worse than Sony or Panasonic. So I've read and been told. I can only really go by Sony and Panasonic though personally. I do use and understand graphics software fairly well and digital zoom with those two brands is slightly better, not by much though.

Here's the beast and what I think is different about digital zoom compared to cropping in software.

We are talking here in this thread of a simple 2x overall zoom ratio with DZ. Okay, that is very simple to work out and far too simple for us in here

I'm gonna try and go through this with Rik to see If its right first though. For the meantime............

Lets take a crop this time (no photos yet, just theory meets practise) around the numbers on the btm left of the bottom digital zoom shot there, just the numbers only, so thats a small tight crop. Now with the first shot there at optical zoom only at 10x, lets crop the same section and then resize that to suit the crop on the digital zoom. Hard to explain, but can you see what would happen. Can we expect such a tiny crop on the first shot, to equal the crop on the numbers only, in the last shot.

Practical tells me there is no way. For me the digital zoomed shot is already at a high ratio, so a crop on that is already way enlarged compared to the non DZ cropped shot.

Its a bit like comparing a wide angle shot and then zooming in to try and get an image with a different focal length of say 700mm. There will always be more detail in the 700mm shot compared to a 24mm shot cropped and resized. Thats a focal length difference though and not DZ.

Anyway, I'll sort out a few shots and pass those by Rik first.

Danny.