DIY Microphotography...help!
 

My brother is fascinated by micro photography. He's been given a Field Microscope 45 mag (Macroscope). He wants to photograph specimens through the macroscope. At present he has a Nikon Coolpix 7600 7.1 MP 3x zoom lens 7.8 - 23.4mm f2.8 - 4.9 and has been trying to work out a way of sleeving the camera to the macroscope. Has anyone overcome the problems involved and/or know of any relevant sites? I think we'll have another member soon!!! - he spends more time on his hobby than I can manage at present :(

I have only heard of connecting an SLR to a microscope with an adaptor and 'T' mount not with a bridge camera but perhaps someone else knows better?

Has your brother tried hand-holding the camera to the eyepiece to take a picture? I would imagine this is a variation on digiscoping, the opposite end of the magnification scale, but you are essentially trying to take a picture viewed through another optical device.

Microscope eyepieces are not as wide as scope eyepieces so I expect you would get terrible vignetting.

Thanks folks. I think he poses a difficult problem. He has tried hand held shots but found it almost impossible to get close to sharp images. It appears he will be able to take some shots once he works out the problems of precise and steady focusing which he is approaching by mating up plastic sleeves to camera and scope and adapting a small tripod. Although, as you've said Mike, he is still faced with a very small actual image.

Those tiny web or surveillance videocams (With very tiny lens and sensor) are rather cheap and worthy way to check for digiscoping / digi-microscoposcoping. It has been used for astro work and I remember intel had a commercial version on a cheap microscope that was quite cheap in the package. And yes I would think you will not come with a sharp image like that of SLR but still if you really need this type of sharp image, your best bet is that old approach via T mount.

Just saw this one:

LINK

That is the kind of cheaper combo I was talking about. Simple and fun to use thought not professional. Well after all we get what we pay for.

Many thanks Sassan - have passed info on to my brother - may help him with macro-on-the-cheap!

Here's a little something that may be of interest here!

Last year I spent some time experimenting with a 10x magnifying glass and a compact camera on macro mode, the results might not be ''art'' but it is a cheap and quite effective method when higher magnification isn't needed.
''Static'' objects are probably best as live specimans are very hard to control with this method ~ I tried this with a zebra spider from the garden and gave up after 10 minutes!!

The camera is simply fixed on a tripod looking down on the object of choice through the magnifying glass...

Matt

For micro-digiscoping your best bet is to get hold of a digscoping adapter (try http://www.eagleeyeuk.com/) I've gave this a go myself and the result can be seen here