Very new at photomicroscopy

[rjlittlefield]

I see the camera in your Samsung SPH-D700 has the same color shift in frame center that my HTC Droid does.

However, if you can live with the color shift, that cell phone camera will make some decent pictures using the afocal method. Just point it down the eyepiece and move it around until everything lines up so you don't get too much vignetting.

(Don't mind me, I'm just looking around for fallbacks. I've done support for kids' projects so I know it can get a little nerve-wracking. )

--Rik

[Charles Krebs]

I do not see how to adjust anything inside the head, should I avoid playing in there?

Yes.

The eye pieces and the tube with an eyepiece atop both show blurriness, but the trinoc has a huge difference by comparison. I tried a pad of paper with a pattern at 90x and again the right side is slightly blurry even through he eyepieces

It sounds like something it out of alignment in directing the image to the trinocular tube. One reason I thought you should "double-check" with a flat subject is that the eyes can be very "accommodating" while a camera is not. So it would not be particularly surprising to find that with a subject having great depth, areas that were not at the exact plane of focus but still appeared to be OK through the eyepieces did not seem to be quite as good in the picture. But visually using the same viewing eyepiece in both the top "camera" tube and one of the front "viewing" tubes, you should not see any real difference.

You say you have 10X eyepieces, so how are you determining a magnification of 90X? What model Meiji is it? (I did not think that they had any models that went up to a 9X zoom setting). Are you using an auxiliary lens screwed onto the front? If not, the visual magnification would be the zoom setting x 10, and the magnification on the camera sensor would be the zoom setting x 1.9.

[Simonoff]

Thanks I will try the afocal cell phone camera technique. I will post results here, since I am sure someone will be interested.

This is a 45x Meiji with an extra lens that sits just above the subject being viewed. It was a large lens that I screwed onto the underside of the scope. Meiji claimed it was 2x.

So it seems like I can see if I can "hack" it to work for the images I need - cell phone, using my MP-E65 somehow pointed down the eyepiece, a different portable camera pointed down the eyepiece, etc. Failing that, I can look for a repair shop and see what they say. Sound right???

Thanks
Bob

[Charles Krebs]

Meiji claimed it was 2x.

Yes, that would take you up to 90x

So it seems like I can see if I can "hack" it to work for the images I need - cell phone

Cell phone should work.

using my MP-E65 somehow pointed down the eyepiece

Nope.

a different portable camera pointed down the eyepiece

Yes, if you have a point-and-shoot with an attached lens give it a try. Or try the T1i with a slightly wide to "normal" lens that will focus to "infinity".

The "repair" is likely a matter of adjusting or resetting a prism that directs the image. If there is no one locally that works on microscopes I would sent it to Meiji once your immediate project is completed.

[rjlittlefield]

using my MP-E65 somehow pointed down the eyepiece

Nope.

Mmm...maybe...

There are two issues with the MP-E 65:
1) it doesn't focus anywhere near infinity,
2) its field of view is narrower than you'd guess based on its focal length, because of its minimum magnification of 1:1.

As a result, when you point an MP-E 65 into an eyepiece, you'll only be capturing about 1/3 of the eyepiece diameter, the focus will shift compared to what you see in the normal eyepiece, and the microscope optics will be dragged somewhat away from their design point and may pick up some added aberrations in the process.

All that said, it's worth a try. In a quick test that I did just now, the image through an MP-E 65 actually looks pretty good. Given a choice between that and the cell phone, I'd try both & look at the results.

Here's the test: setup like HERE except with MP-E instead of legacy 55 mm lens, target is a piece of smoked glass covered by many crystals, like HERE except I didn't attempt to fix the white balance to correct for the brown smoke. This is using a CF N Plan Achromat 10X objective and 10X eyepiece. The field width is 0.52 mm; there's no noticeable curvature of field.



Hope this helps.

--Rik

[Simonoff]

Here we are with the cell phone camera.



On the MP-E 65 well .... you are going to laugh. I have been taking a few pictures with it. They weren't great but not horrid either. But I read in this forum that my setup was suboptimal. I read the post about building a wooden structure to hold the camera, etc instead of using the tripod. About 2 days later my tripod decided that it was not able to hold the camera and MP-E lens anymore. It slowed drifted downward and nothing I could do would lock it in place anymore. So I am now support-less for the camera.

Thanks all! I think repair is my best bet at this point. The cell phone is not good enough quality and the point and shoots in our house didn't work out so well either. The cell phone was actually better.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it. Once I can figure out the instructions for building the frame that was described, I will have more questions in the MP-E 65 world. I could well become your worst nightmare.

Night all!
Bob

[Simonoff]

Hmm maybe I gave up too quickly on the household cameras. Having seen thew incredible pictures that are posted on this site, I am a little hesitant to embarrass myself by showing these, but I will anyway.









While some of these have a blurry section, they were also blurry in the eyepiece image. The piece is 3 dimensional and you can't always frame the perfect picture. But I may play with this afocal technique more, I might be able to coerce it into some pictures that could be acceptable. Not 100% sure yet.

There is so much to be improved upon that it is hard to know where to start, but at least I have something to work with. I found that no zooming was best and I think macro mode worked. I probably need to find a simple way to support the camera since some of the artifacts could be because I was holding the camera to the eyepiece.

Thanks - recommendations always welcome, but I think I have a start!
Bob

[rjlittlefield]

No further recommendations at this time. That last set looks very encouraging, especially the last image. I think you're on a good path.

--Rik

[microcollector]

Bob,

I don't recall where you live other than back east. If you are anywhere near Connecticut, you might want to check with Jim Ross at Absolute Clarity and Calibration. He sells Meiji scopes and does repair work. You might want to contact him about your problem. I and others have found him very good to work with. I have a EMZ5-TR which I got through him.

Doug

[Simonoff]

Result of discussions with Meiji

Well I contacted Meiji and emailed them the photo taken through the trinocular port. On the phone they said they have never heard of that prism getting out of alignment on an EMZ-8TR. The other models that have the level have this occur often, but if there is no level, the prism is attached and unmovable.

They, did, however provide an explanation that made sense to me at least. I thought people reading this forum might also be interested

----
Thank you for the image sent.

When projecting the image to the Trinocular port. The image taken is from the vantage point of one objective lens that is bent at 13.5 degree due to the design of the Greenough Microscope – EMZ-Series.

You will have to tilt the specimen a little bit to compensate for this and this is due to the internal design of the system. At the highest magnification this is where the depth of field is the shallowest as well.

The other type of microscope design is a Common Main Objective design wherein the objective lenses are parallel not designed at an angle.
----

Thanks for your help everyone!
Bob

[rjlittlefield]

Interesting. The explanation makes perfect sense, except that now I'm having trouble squaring the explanation with your earlier observation that viewing through an eyepiece in the trinoc tube didn't match what you saw through the normal tubes. If I'm guessing correctly about the scope design, seems like the trinoc image should match one or the other of the normal eyepiece images. When you get back to the equipment, can you check whether that's true? Just curious, but I learn a lot by trying to run these things to ground.

BTW, if you're looking for an explanation of Greenough versus CMO, see http://www.microscopyu.com/articles/ste ... intro.html.

--Rik

[Simonoff]

Ok now I have learned something more that I think helps us get to the bottom of this. I got this scope for my daughter. I however am doing her a favor by doing the photography. My daughter's eyesight is fine. I however have had strabismus since birth. When looking forward, my right eye is centered and fine, but my left eye looks down and to my left. As a result, I have no 3d vision and when looking through a binocular scope, my brain automatically ignores all input from my left eye. It is something I never think about so never thought to mention. So naturally when I provided the photos through the eyepiece I shot through the right eyepiece. But have a look at the picture of the scope:

Meiji trinocular scope

The trinocular tube is on the left side, not centered as one would expect. Almost all pictures of this scope are taken from an angle such that you can not really tell that this is actually the case. Then I decided to take a photo down the left eyepiece and, lo and behold, it matches EXACTLY what is seen down the trinocular tube focus-wise.

Bob

[rjlittlefield]

Perfect! Now all is understood, the hardware seems to be working correctly, and you should be good to go forward. Thank you for the careful investigation!

--Rik

[Simonoff]

Thank you! It has been wonderful learning from the people on this forum. I thought I would take a few shots with my new found knowledge and post them here. I can update what minerals are here after my daughter's paper has been published. I have been sworn to secrecy :-)

If anyone has feedback for improvement of the short, I would be even happier. I do not have precise field of views on these, but I would say each is 0.5mm or less. Someday I will figure out how to calculate this. I guess I also need to figure out how to make them less blurry. There seems to be no way to get the focus any better - I played with live view and fine focus for awhile and couldn't improve it.















I guess I will share these with my daughter and see what she thinks. Maybe it will be cool I can use these - or could be daaaaaad these are lame. We will see :-)

Thanks again everyone!!!
Bob

[rjlittlefield]

I do not have precise field of views on these, but I would say each is 0.5mm or less. Someday I will figure out how to calculate this.

A reliable method is to photograph a mm ruler at the lowest magnification your scope can be set, then scale from there based on the change in magnification. For example if your field width is 5 mm at "10X", it will be 0.55 mm at "90X". It's very error-prone to try calculating just from manufacturer's specs, with no measurement to start. (I've put the "10X" and "90X" in quote marks to indicate that as far as the camera is concerned, the absolute values of those numbers don't mean much. It's their ratio that counts.)

I guess I also need to figure out how to make them less blurry. There seems to be no way to get the focus any better - I played with live view and fine focus for awhile and couldn't improve it.

You may be at the limit of your equipment. I don't know the specs on that Meiji scope, but it's common for stereo scopes to have small apertures that make a tradeoff in favor of depth of field versus high resolution. To photograph a subject that's only 0.5 mm wide, we would normally use at least a 10X NA 0.25 microscope objective, which probably has resolution several times higher than your scope, and corresponding less DOF.

One way to partially compensate for the small aperture is to sharpen aggressively. Here's an example from your last post, on the left as posted and on the right processed in Photoshop with the "Unsharp Mask" sharpening filter at Amount: 100% and Radius: 1.7 pixels. Note that this was done on the size image that you posted. When you sharpen camera-sized images, you'll need an even larger radius, in proportion to the pixel counts.



Finally, if DOF is still a problem, you can attack that with focus stacking. If you do that, the small aperture of your scope is actually an advantage when getting started, because its relatively large DOF per frame means that you'll need to stack fewer frames per subject. A good package for this job is Zerene Stacker; there's an unrestricted 30-day free trial that might be enough to get you through this whole exercise. (Disclaimer: I wrote Zerene, so I recommend it a lot.)

Hope this helps -- you're making great progress on the learning curve.

--Rik