DSLR to Microscope — Is This Possible?

Some years ago, when my father passed away, I inherited, among other things, his microscope.



I soon discovered that by pointing a cheap digital camera into the eyepiece, I could take much, much, much better pictures than I previously imagined would be possible by such a crude method.

But now, I have my very first non-cheap digital camera, a Nikon D3200, I'm wondering what it would take—if it's possible at all—to use it to take pictures through this microscope.

Optically, I doubt I'd just be able to point it into the eyepiece. Every lens I have to fit the D3200 has a front element bigger than the diameter of the eyepiece. It'd be looking around the microscope as much as through it. Also, the weight of the DSLR, I think, might be enough to push the microscope out of focus.

It'd be great if I could make this work, but I'm dubious.

Anyone have any advice? What I want to do, is it feasible; and if so, how?

This is actually very much possible. I came across this idea during class. Our professor said we could do anything that came to mind to memorize or study the material in the microscope. At the time, I used my i-phone... it worked wonders! After that day, I would bring my DSLR on review days just in case. The main issue is to get at the right angle. Working straight from the top isn't always the best. I had to get on top of a chair or bench to get at a good angle. Maybe put the microscope on the floor and shoot from above. I wish I could show you my examples but my laptop crashed with these photos. Just wanted to let you know you can do it with a little creativity. Other students thought I was crazy but hey it worked and I got a high grade.

You can buy various adaptors on a few sites that will allow microscope lenses to be attached to a DSLR aswell.

Just did a quick google search - Microscope digital camera adapter | DSLR | Nikon

Claudia! said:

This is actually very much possible. I came across this idea during class. Our professor said we could do anything that came to mind to memorize or study the material in the microscope. At the time, I used my i-phone... it worked wonders! After that day, I would bring my DSLR on review days just in case. The main issue is to get at the right angle. Working straight from the top isn't always the best. I had to get on top of a chair or bench to get at a good angle. Maybe put the microscope on the floor and shoot from above. I wish I could show you my examples but my laptop crashed with these photos. Just wanted to let you know you can do it with a little creativity. Other students thought I was crazy but hey it worked and I got a high grade.

Click to expand...

So, let's see if I am correctly understanding you, here.

This is with a standard eyepiece on the microscope, a standard lens on the DSLR, and pointing the DSLR into the eyepiece, correct? That's pretty much how I've been taking pictures through my microscope using my Sakar 87690, a cheap 7MP camera; and before that, how I took pictures using a Kodak DC3200 (which, by coincidence, has a very similar model designation to my new DSLR).

With the Sakar, I just rest the camera on the eyepiece. Plastic on the camera touches plastic on the eyepiece, and neither the camera nor the eyepiece has any of its glass touching anything.



Surely, that wouldn't be how you'd do it with a DSLR. You didn't have the front glass element of your lens resting on the microscope's eyepiece, did you? I'm very fussy about anything touching the glass, and I'd expect anyone with an expensive lens or other fine optics to be likewise. So how much space did you have between the lens and the eyepiece, and how did you maintain that space?

And what did you do about keeping light from entering the lens around the microscope?

It occurs to me that vibration from the camera could cause issues. I'm quite sure my Sakar has no moving parts at all, but my DSLR has the mirror and the focal plane shutter, which could cause vibration at the time the picture is being taken. Running the camera in “Live View” mode would eliminate the mirror movement, but not the shutter.

I have a vague memory of trying something similar to this, a long time ago, with this same microscope (back then, my father was still alive, and it was his microscope) and my F2. I had the F2 mounted on a tripod, pointing down, and positions just barely over the microscope. The experiment went as far as me looking through the F2's viewfinder, and determining that the image from the microscope was not being properly rendered therein.

Scott Murray said:

You can buy various adaptors on a few sites that will allow microscope lenses to be attached to a DSLR aswell.

Just did a quick google search - Microscope digital camera adapter | DSLR | Nikon

Click to expand...

That's about what I am inclined to imagine it would take. On the microscope side, it appears to take the place of the eyepiece, and on the camera side, it takes the place of the lens. In between, it must have the suitable optics to correct the microscope's image to the camera's focal plane. And at about $900 for the setup, it's well beyond my budget. Also, it looks like it depends on the microscope to support the weight of the camera and the adapter, which I think would not work well with my microscope.

Claudia! said:

This is actually very much possible. I came across this idea during class. Our professor said we could do anything that came to mind to memorize or study the material in the microscope. At the time, I used my i-phone... it worked wonders! After that day, I would bring my DSLR on review days just in case. The main issue is to get at the right angle. Working straight from the top isn't always the best. I had to get on top of a chair or bench to get at a good angle. Maybe put the microscope on the floor and shoot from above. I wish I could show you my examples but my laptop crashed with these photos. Just wanted to let you know you can do it with a little creativity. Other students thought I was crazy but hey it worked and I got a high grade.

Click to expand...

Your post inspired me to make the attempt, but I can't call the results a success. I'd certainly appreciate much more guidance regarding how you did it.

Here's how I tried to do it:



The camera is supported by the tripod, with the filter on the front of the lens just a millimeter or two above the top of the microscope's eyepiece.

And here's the result, full frame, and cropped to the part that counts at all:



Optically, it looks like the biggest issue is that the camera just cannot get “close” enough to the eyepiece. The effect is like that of trying to look through the microscope, but having one's eye much too far away from the eyepiece. The image from the microscope occupies too small a part of the field of view, and you can see only a very narrow part of the microscope's field of view.

All the pictures attached to my OP were taken with my cheap Sakar, with the lens bezel resting on the microscope's eyepiece. You can see that the microscope's field of view just about properly fills the frame. Note, also, the scale that appears in those pictures—it's built into my 15× eyepiece, which is the one I used by far the most. I have two other eyepieces, 5× and 10×, which do not have any such scale. You can see that in the picture that I took with my DSLR, only about ⅓ of the total length of the scale is visible; corresponding to a similar amount of the microscope's whole field of view that is cut off in this image.

I wasn't expecting much when I began this experiment, and I think it actually worked a bit better than I expected, but the result is very far short of satisfactory. It is very far sort of what I have been getting using a much cheaper camera.

I guess I had to try it. I wasn't expecting anything useful, some years ago, when I first pointed my Kodak DC3200 (interesting coincidence that the very first digital camera that I ever owned has a model designation so similar to that of my new DSLR) into my microscope; but in this case, I was astonished to get a result that was far better than I thought possible. Here's the very first picture that I took in that manner:



The object just below the scale, between the 4.0 and 4.5 ticks, is a Paramecium — a one-celled critter with no brain that can't fly.

I've greatly improved my techniques and results considerably since then; as you can see from the images in my OP.