Gamma Spectrometry Forum

After being fascinated by the view of my trinitite samples using what is essentially a high-end kid's microscope, I decided to get a (relatively) inexpensive stereo microscope (trinocular Swift S7 zoom). I'm really enjoying the microscope, but I'm finding it hard to get information on accessories. Considering the delightfully inquisitive group on this forum, I thought someone else may be further along in this auxiliary hobby and be able to offer some advice or experience.

Some of my questions:

- My microscope is a trinocular configuration which has an extra light path and camera mount. The port has a C-mount adapter with a reduction lens. I don't see a way to adapt it to use a cell phone as a camera, but anyone have any ideas? I know I can use a cell phone adapter at the eyepiece, but it would be nice to retain the stereo view and still have the cell camera ready to go, which the the point of a trinocular.

- Any experience with C-mount microscope cameras? The pricing is all over the place and it there's not much in the way of independent information about image quality and ease of use.

- Would I be better off getting a pair of 20x eyepieces (comes with 10x) or a 2x barlow to increase magnification? (I already have a 0.5x barlow for wider field and more working distance). Note that in telescopes, my experience has been that barlows are added between the eyepiece and the optical tube, in stereo microscopes, it appears that what they call a barlow is an axillary lens that screws to the front of the objective lens.

- The ring light that came with my microscope works well enough, but I'm wondering about options to upgrade. I'd be particularly interested in a unit that allows me to shift the light to one side or the other to give better dimension compared to the flat lighting offered by a pure ring light. Any good options?

Images were captured using my cell phone at the eyepiece. Subject is a small GM tube (~10mm OD). I was examining the seal area. The actual stereo visual image is much sharper and more detailed.

Thanks!

Mike S.

Hi Mike,
You may use a cheap C mount-to-XXmm thread adapter (or a combination of this and a XXmm thread-YYmm thread adapter), which could allow you to mount your old digital SLR camera for example (using the thread for the filter at the front of the objective) and take quite good pictures. You can also give a try to a C mount-to-Canon EF adapter for example and mount the camera directly without the objective, but I remember I had better results and it was easier to adapt it with a 50mm objective between the trinocular and the camera.

This is what I was busy with several years before (the objective is a vario, but it was just for experimenting, fixed ~50mm is what it should be):
And a picture taken with this setup:
Greetings,

[This post was mistakenly edited and most of the content was removed. I'm summarizing what I had before so the thread maintains continuity.]

In the post that went missing, I thanked Svilen for the information and said that I subsequently tried his suggestion and several different solutions using a DSLR (with and without lens) and a cell phone adapter. Due to the particular optical setup of my microscope, I decided on a purpose built microscope camera. That camera works OK, but the depth of focus is so small that it's hard to get nice images, especially when compared to the binocular view through the eyepieces. I stated that I was going to try adding some sort of iris to increase depth of focus since I had plenty of light and could just increase exposure if needed.

The DSLR worked well enough for me, but every setup have it's optics and different quality, maybe this is not the best option in your case. Please, tell later if the diaphragm helped.