I've been observing my liquid sample under optical microscope and found the digital picture shown in the computer as obscure and less in quality from the actual picture seen through the eyepiece. I assume this is common for all the microscopes. How can I capture this eyepiece picture to a video?
There are eyepiece camera adapters, but if the image at the camera port of your microscope is worse than the eyepiece image, something is wrong with your microscope. The image at the camera port should be just as good or better than the eyepiece image. I would check both the microscope optics and the camera to make sure nothing is dirty or misaligned.
Probably, this is because of illumination. Illumination suitable for eye and that most suitable for camera may not be the same. In this case, try to adjust illumination viewing the camera image. If you have done this, please miss my comment
Thanks all of you. The alignment as well as illumination are alright. No dust problems. With some tweaks in the camera settings, I'm now able to get a decent image, but still inferior to the quality observed from eye piece. The other concern is the loss of field of view in CCD picture compared to what is observed from eye piece. Is it a general limitation of all optical lenses when compared with the field of view covered by lens of a human eye, or is it a fault of the machine? The microscope is Leica made, DM 2700.
Dear Viswanath,
I`m confusing about the microscope setting and the CCD camera and software you have. Usually the DM2700 model from Leica is for material science and surface analysis by incident illuminations rather than conventional transillumination light microscopy and therefore, not the first option for biological high resolution analysis. Even using transillumination (it is possible to adapt in this led light source microscope model), the objective lenses you choose to set the microscope make differences. If you are not getting good resolution of images in the digital images using CCD camera, you must check the sensitivy and resolution (pixels/area) and also the software of your image analysis system. Check the manufacturer manual or contact the manufacturer to give you the necessary assistance. It looks like you don`t have a good CCD camera and software for you purpose. Usually a good set costs around 10 thousand US dollars. The small area of digital picture is proportional to the size of CCD sensor (the smallest is also cheeper than the larger one with high resolution), or the magnification of projective lens build in the optical path of microscope that collect the image and project it to the CCD sensor. There is a set of mirror that you shft to see directely by ocular lenses or project to CCD camera that require this proective lenses to focus the image on CCD sensor.
Hope these brief explanations help your diagnosis and solve your problem. Good luck.
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