ITP

Cheap micoroscope camera vs Mark III with adaptor by Sebastian Morales

Microscopes

Testing different camera setups on the school microscope. The microscope itself is pretty shitty but I wanted to compare the AmScope camera against the canon adapter and a markIII.

Canon Adapter and Mark III

The adapter is nothing but a simple mount to attach the camera to the microscope. Because of this the images end up not covering the entire frame. For reference, the specimen is about 3-5mm long.

If I were to take this pictures again I would like to pay closer attention to the with balance and make sure I was shooting in RAW.

This is the same picture but framed to avoid showing the black circle:

Digitalzoom

A closer look... (digital zoom)

Digitalzoom

Here we can still observe some details.

AmScope + ToupLite

ToupLite is the software used to capture the images. For some reason the camera won't be detected as a simple webcam.

Taking a closer (digital) look at this same image:

Digitalzoom

Side by side:

AmScope - Canon w/ adapter

Clearly a superior detail with the adapter. Future work would involve testing this with a live feed to the computer.

BUT where the Canon really outbids the cheap microscope camera is while taking video. The framerate I was getting with the AM camera was about 1fs, 3 at best. Compared to the 30 or 60fps of the Mark III.

Of course, if you compare the price tags then the AM camera might not be that terrible considering it is about 15 times cheaper.

The actual setup looks like this:

Canon_with_adptor.jpg

The following picture is a different microscope but same concept.

Canon mounted on microscope