TransWikia.com

Why is my microscope camera so zoomed in compared to looking through the microscope's eyepiece?

Photography Asked on July 13, 2021

Apologies if this isn’t the right place for this–it’s the closest match I could think of. Please feel free to move it if it should be elsewhere.

At my work, I use a microscope on a regular basis. Because of the way it’s set up, it’s much easier to attach a microscope camera to it and use that, connected to a monitor, for most work. However, when I put the microscope camera on, it seems to be zoomed in, meaning I can only see a very small portion of the center of the image on the screen. The camera is zoomed out as far as it goes, but I still see even less than just the middle ninth of the image, compared to looking through the eyepiece.

Is this indicative of a problem with the setup, perhaps some adapter I should have that i don’t? Or just that buying a cheap microscope camera wasn’t the best idea? Or is this somehow just an intrinsic problem with using a microscope camera in general?

The microscope, if it’s relevant, is a Seiwa PS-888, and the microscope camera is a super cheap Omano TMS-HDMI-1.

2 Answers

I looked at the specs for the camera and microscope and I think you're running into a crop-sensor problem. The camera you're using has a 1/3" sensor, which means that if the image the microscope is projecting is 1" across at the camera's focal plane then you're only looking at the middle 1/7 of the image circle.

Of course, the eyepiece you're using affects the image you see vs what the camera sees. if your eyepiece had more magnification then it might be a perfect match for the camera setup you now have. The source I link to below has a table that shows, for a 10x eyepiece, that a 1/3" sensor needs a .3x reducer for the image to match what you see through the eyepiece.

Usually (when using an eyepiece adapter) you can get C-Mount adapters that have a reduction lens built in so that the small sensor size is better matched to the image size.

If the C-Mount adapter comes off of your 'scope and leaves an eyepiece sized tube you might be able to use one of these. A discussion of C-Mount reduction adapters (with useful links) can be found here.

Answered by BobT on July 13, 2021

Your microscope camera sports an imaging chip that is labeled 1/3 inch. This is a misleading nomenclature. It’s origin is the diameter of a glass vacuum tube used in TV cameras of the past. Your imaging chip’s measurements are approximately 3.5mm height by 4.66mm length.

Your 1/3 inch imaging chip is typical of low cost point-and-shoot still cameras.

For example, a high-end microscope camera sports a full frame imaging chip that measures 24mm height by 36mm length.

The best way to explain the difference is to compute the diagonal differenced thus: Your chip has a diagonal measure of 3.5mm. The full frame camera has a diagonal that measures 43.26mm.

The difference is: 43.26 ÷ 3.5 = 12.36. This value is called the crop factor or magnification factor. It tells us that your camera yields a tiny image that must be magnified 12 1/3 times to produce an image the same size as a full frame camera. Another way to state this: 1/12.36 X 100 = 8%. In other words, you camera's imaging chip is only 8% of the size of a full frame camera.

Answered by Alan Marcus on July 13, 2021

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP