Digital Eyepieces for Microscopes?

tfiedler asks: "I'm trying to find a low cost digital eyepiece for my microscope, around $200 or so in cost, and have ran across very little useful information. I want something that can be plugged into my video capture card, so RCA or S-vid output is a requirement. I've found the following two products. The barrel for my microscope is 18mm in diameter. Does anyone have other suggestions, or any experience with the ones at the mentioned URLs? Additionally, has anyone done anything like this with a webcam?"

Comments

Not just microscopes

[DynaSoar]

You might find more options if you don't limit yourself to microscope accessory makers. Try including telescopes. Although the barrel sizes differ (telescope eyepieces being usually either 1.25 or 2 inch diameter) the technology should be compatible/adaptable. I found this one: http://www.scopetronix.com/digitalcam.htm

I've been working on this myself.

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

I use a low power stereoscopic microscope to inspect assembled printed circuit boards. I need to be able to drop the camera over the eyepiece, snap a .jpg, and email it to the board vendor when I see a defect. All with a minimial amount of hassle. Since I have a Win98 box next to me, a USB camera would work, but I'm having trouble getting the mechanics and optics to work. IBM's webcam has a nice integrated capture and email utility so they might be my first choice.

Have you tried Edmund?

[NickFusion]

The folks at the venerable Edmund Industrial Optical probably have what you seek.

Edmund...ah...what a catalog.

Commercial solutions

[raider_red]

If you're looking at paying a good chunk of money, you might try these guys. They make a 5 MPixel digital model for microscopes.

http://www.vaytek.com/cameras.htm

Old Quickcams seem to work well for this.

[Myself]

I bought a Connectix Color Quickcam 2, back before Logitech bought the product line, when such things cost a week's wages. I quickly discovered that the ball could be opened with a paperclip, and after unscrewing the lens housing, the infrared filter could be removed. This gave the unit phenomenal "night vision", and soon I added an IR LED to the camera's housing, powered from the 5v lead in the cable. (Those who attended Rubi-Con 1 probably remember this.)

That's just the beginning of the fun. After opening the Quickcam case, you'll find that the lens barrel unscrews completely, exposing the bare CCD. This makes it easy to mount in all sorts of optical projects. Mount it in your favorite telescope for astral or terrestrial viewing. Some folks have even placed negatives and microfilm directly against the CCD for contact imaging. I haven't personally played with a microscope application but it should work just fine for that too.

A bit of quick Googling will turn up plenty of Quickcam modification links. But, why are webcams an option if you need Composite or S-video output?

Re:Old Quickcams seem to work well for this.

[cybermace5]

The old Quickcams were actually pretty decent even by today's standards. Most of today's webcams use CMOS sensors, which really need to see a pretty bright scene before the signal-to-noise ratio becomes acceptable. The old cameras used CCD sensors. You can adjust the exposure down so far, that even very dark scenes can be viewed without all the graininess of a CMOS sensor.

My old Quickcam VC fell a long ways onto a tiled floor, which broke the ball housing. So I took out the internals and built them into a little pan/tilt platform using two RC servos and some heat-formed plexiglass: Plexicam

Nikon

[Seraphim_72]

Nikon has a ton of products for this very purpose and in fact many if not all major vendors carry and sell them. If you want a webcam ready microscope you are going to have to buy one I would bet. But even a quick look at Amazon will yield interesting results. We have the Nikon setup in the lab and it is a wonderful beast.

Sera

Using a webcam

[blate]

I have a friend who's into telescopes. He built a digital capture attachment for his telescope(s) using a logitech webcam (USB). He basically removed the existing lens assembly from the camera and mounted the imager inside/on/about a camera adapter for his telescope. I would imagine that the same technique would work for a microscope, and you could use an NTSC camera instead of a USB camera.

Apparently, it took him a couple trys (trial and error) to get the focal length and everything lined up properly, but it made some nice pictures.

Good luck :)

What kind of applications?

[Deanasc]

What kind of microscope will this be, standard or inverted? Will you be taking snapshots or full motion video? What will your lighting be? Brightfield, fluorescence, DIC, Hoffman correction or what? Will you be trying to take long shutter speed high gain exposures to capture fine details in low light? Does your microscope have a camera port built in or is it a bare bones "student" microscope?

I'd start with what I expect in an image and build a system from there. If you just want to take simple pictures of things close up you might also consider dumping your current microscope and going with this.