Hello scientists,
I wonder why it is that when I try to take a picture through a microscope with my camera holding my camera (my iPhone) steady as I am able to next to my microscope to take a picture of what my eyes see when I look through the eyepiece of a microscope onto my samples on microscope samples my camera sees a spotlight of light slide across the frame of view of my phone. The region illuminated moves regardless of if I move my phone. If I move my phone the region illuminated moves with my phone, but I can't predict how it will move. Eventually it moves into focus and I can take a great picture if I can keep calm and patient, and then it moves out of focus just as fast.
What I'd like to know is why the region illuminated moves regardless of if I move my phone? Is it because the lights in the room emit a flickering intensity of brightness and it casts a variable shadow on me?
I will show you some pictures so you can see what I mean by the phenomena.
Note that I took these pictures without flash so the flashlight on my phone is not a factor in these images. These are some stages of my patiently acquiring a stellar photograph of some gram positive endospore producing soil bacteria specimen.
Thanks. What is the principle behind this physical phenomena?
I think your phone is not quite pointing in the right direction, and getting the picture in the right place is very sensitive to this. I see similar things if my eye is not quite in the right place.
The way I see it there is a near exact position your eye has to be placed for optimal viewing of the focused slide. Using a phone's camera as a crude version of the eye makes this all the more sensitive- many tiny things come into factor, such as your breathing. So you think you might be holding it steady, but the only way to ensure this is to balance it (on the workbench/ tripod/ camera stand) or your elbows on an unmoving object.
The camera has to be pretty much perpendicular to the axis of the eyepiece. I guess that the image appears to be off-centre by the actual tilt angle multiplied by the magnification.
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