Udo,

In our lab for our widefield system we bought an adapter that allows us to connect almost any standard dSLR camera to our microscope. I can get you the spwcs if you'd like. Canon on their rebel series and some other brands also provide software that allows you to control the camera with the computer. We have found that this system works very well and takes gorgeous images.

Hi Joseph,

yes I would appreciate it if you send me the specs. Do you use a 3x Megapixel camera or much more sophisticated one's (10xMPs)?

We currently use a Canon Powershot G15. It's a dSLR substitute, but it's nice because you can interchange most lenses with it, and it doesn't have the pricetag of most dSLR systems. You can get it on Amazon for around $300 to $400. The one downside is that unlike the eOS and Rebel lines from Canon, you cannot remotely control the G15 with your computer (or at least if you can we haven't yet figured out how). To be perfectly honest though, we use this system because the Powershot is our all-purpose lab camera and we aren't trying to take publication level or quantitative images with it. If I were going to purchase a dedicated system for our widefield (which we are currently considering), then I would go with the EOS line and would be certain to purchase one with remote control capabilities.

As for the adaptor, it can be found at the following site:

http://www.usascopes.com/dicaadforcap1.html

But there are others sites with similar products.

We have a Nikon Eclipse E600 scope. The top trinocular tube unscrews and the adaptor fits nicely into place. It also came with an adaptor that allows us to remove one of the eyepieces. Since we have a trinocular scope, however, we never use that feature but we could if we wanted to take pictures on one of our binocluar scopes.

My recommendation (if you want a dedicated system that isn't cost prohibitive, will take awesome pictures, and allow you to control it remotely as well as lock in settings across images for quantitative analysis) is a Canon EOS Rebel T2i or T3i (the T3i has a built-in rotating LCD so you can view what the camera sees without needing to constantly move up and down. From the same usascopes website you can get an adaptor for the Canon EOS. Also, the EOS systems all come bundled with the Canon EOS Utility which allows you to control the camera from your computer, and now they even have an app so you can control it from your smartphone. Check out the sites below for this combo:

http://www.usascopes.com/canondslr.html

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-T3i-Digital-Imaging-18-55mm/dp/B004J3V90Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1392047535&sr=1-1&keywords=canon+eos

Combine these with a motorized stage and Zen software and you've got a helluva system. Hope this helps.

Thx a lot

In my opinion, these days you need full slide scan (like Aperio or the others), this allows for a dynamic near real-life digital microscopy. The scans done at x20 objective magnification are perfect, and have decent file size, the scans done at x40 are perfect, but hardly add anything of significance (except that you see more artifacts and fine details you never need to see).

Digital photos are OK, and 3-5 mp give you publication quality photos, but is all about making a photo snapshot and is not as dynamic as slide scan is. If I want to make a presentation I use photos, but for teaching and real research I use scans. You can easily make snapshots of the scans, just save the screen you like...and you don;t even need a camera..of course you need a slide scanner..or get your slides scanned elsewhere.