Grrrr! Dirty camera!

[Crater Eddie]

blood smear stained with Wrights Giemsa stain with cover glass oiled to slide

I have just about had it with this dirty camera! This is the 3mp USB camera that I have had for a few years. Thanks to lots of good guidance from the very knowledgeable and helpful folks here on the forum I am getting better and better images with this camera, but at high mag the crud in my images is getting the best of me.
Looking at the camera with my inspection scope at work I can see tiny specs, but I'm still not quite sure if they are on the imaging chip itself or on the underside of the IR filter. So far I have resisted the temptation to open it up and try to clean the specs away, but my resistance is beginning to crack. This would be a pretty good close up image of a typical neutrophil if not for all the crud. You can even see the tiny filaments that connect the segments of the nucleus together, which is pretty darned good.
I think if it wasn't for the 20 minute drive (and the very real possibility of getting suckered into doing actual work once I got there), I would take this in to my lab today and give it a whirl.
CE

[mrsonchus]

Well, like you say the potential is obvious, as is your mastery of technique - the contamination is clearly the problem. It's definitely possible to clean a sensor - camera shops do it with special kits. The kit is basically a tiny piece of cleaner-containing cloth that is dragged across the sensor in one direction. Personally I'd give this a go as you can purchase such kits although they're quite expensive. Others here will be able to give you expert advice re a suitable cleaning-agent, and the technique seems pretty straightforward - it should be possible to do it yourself...
If you're at the stage where you've nothing to lose you may as well give it a try.


A lovely clear picture lies beneath those 'bits', don't give up with it!

[Crater Eddie]

blood smear stained with Wrights Giemsa stain with cover glass oiled to slide


Thanks for the encouragement!
While you were typing I was taking the camera apart
This image was taken with the IR filter removed, it's pretty obvious that the majority of the contamination is on the IR filter, though there is a little on the imaging chip itself. Of course the missing filter threw the color balance way off, I fiddled with it a little bit but didn't get it quite right... I mainly wanted to show the much reduced crud. You can see the hot spot in the center of the neutrophil that would ordinarily be filtered out... I would be temped to operate without the filter if not for this. Hmmm... I just had a thought... I do have some large glass IR filters salvaged from other equipment, it would be easy peasy to rest one over the lamp port. You don't suppose...?

[mrsonchus]

I do - give it a try. I often find that a blue filter will increase contrast (the Holy Grail of photomicrography IMHO) of blue-purple features, I usually swing in a blue filter then normalize white balance in the usual way with the capture software before taking the picture...

Incidentally I've recently found that the filter works pp too when applied in my case via PSE-9.

Personally I'd put the IR filter to one side and have a go at cleaning the sensor...

You're very close indeed to producing some top-quality pictures to my eyes. You've made good inroads too some very informative and interesting work - these images are very pleasing.

[Crater Eddie]

I appreciate your comments and suggestions! It so happens that I do have a blue filter... I tried it per your suggestion, but it's so dark that I had trouble correcting for it. I think once I get everything else sorted out I'll look for some lighter blue filters, as it did help with the contrast as you suggested. Anyway, next I removed the blue filter and slipped in the salvaged IR filter. That actually filtered out most of the hot spot, but not all of it. I'll keep playing around, but eventually I'm going to have to try and clean the stock IR filter and the sensor. I'm not quite to that point yet.
CE

[mrsonchus]

Good job Eddie, let us know how you get on.

[Crater Eddie]

blood smear stained with Wrights Giemsa stain with cover glass oiled to slide

Will do!
I got tired of that neutophil, so here is a nice eosinophil. This is just to show the image I get with the salvaged IR filter over the lamp (with the contaminated stock IR filter removed from the camera). Not bad at all. There are still a few specs on the imaging chip, but I can live with that for now. You might notice a little unevenness in the image, I'm hoping that is due to the fact that the camera is simply sitting on top of the relay lens... I have a proper adapter ordered which should take care of the misalignment. Hopefully things will even out once the camera is mounted properly.
Anyway, I am very happy with the improvements so far.
CE

[mrsonchus]

Now then, what about that! That's a very nice image indeed, vivid and retaining detail (I very often overstain and lose detail attempting to increase the brightness of stains, I've recently discovered however that a significant increase in colour is given by the presence of acidified alcohol during staining or differentiation) - a good result for sure.
As far as the good and not-so-good areas of the image, it doesn't matter, if you were trying to produce a std reference slide permanently mounted you'd be striving for the 'perfect panorama' effect across the whole FOV, but that usually only comes either with a good excess of mountant (temporarily that is) allowing the coverslip to 'even itself out' over the specimen (objective can't be too powerful though), or the preparation of a permanent mount (happens very nicely with resin-mountant I find) that has fully dried and 'tightened up' to give the perfectly flat FOV and consequently focal plane.

It's definitely a good preparation I think and is clearly demonstrating your point/s of interest. I gradually got the hang of it by simply practicing, making many slides and getting better each time. It's an art as much of a science at the mounting stage I'd say, and you're clearly off to a very good start...

I always place a small weight onto my coverslips as the mountant dries - I simply use snapped-off lengths of ordinary paper-stapler staples as the size is just right and the weight is just a matter of how many staples (obviously still stuck together) are used when stood on top of the coverslip. Works very well and could be useful for your preparation I think as it would encourage a level coverslip (i.e. parallel to the slide's surface) and augment imaging - worth a try, it works well with resin.

Keep it coming, very interesting to follow your adventure.

[Crater Eddie]

Hey, that's a great tip about using the staples for weights, thanks!
I'll be working on some more blood slides throughout the weekend, if I come across anything interesting I'll put up some more photos. However, seeing that this is my own blood, I hope I don't come across anything too interesting .

[gekko]

Excellent work. And, I must say, brave of you to take the camera apart. When I tried to clean my camera's sensor (in situ, of course), I ended up with a lot more dust on it so I took it to be professionally cleaned. So I'm very impressed with your results. Very nice images.

[Crater Eddie]

Thanks Gekko, I am very pleased with the results, especially as it saves me from having to buy a new camera!
I'm going to try and clean the IR filter today, will update here with results.
CE

[Crater Eddie]

I'm getting back into micro now that the weather is turning cold and nasty again, and some talk on the forum about the Touptek USB cameras reminded me about the issues I was having with mine. Rather than start a whole new thread, I figured I would necro this old one of mine from over a year ago with an update, hope that is ok. Today I brought my camera in to work and dismantled it to put under the inspection scope. Here you can clearly see the grains of crud which have been giving me fits.



The good news is that there is still another glass window over the sensor chip, under where the IR filter was, and the crud is on this window and not the chip itself. So I plowed ahead.



Crud removed! It wasn't as easy as I had hoped, compressed air had no effect at all, and even blew more crud out of nooks and crannies in the camera. At least I blew some of the hidden crud out of there. Next came a wet wipe, not having an expensive sensor cleaner swab I resorted to a Q-tip with a bit of glasses cleaner solution on it. I would NOT have done this if I was cleaning the chip surface itself. The grains cleaned right off! A little polishing with a new clean optics cleaning cloth and it looks pretty good. Tonight I'll try some test images and see how it looks. I'll have to try and find the original IR filter (now where did I put that darned thing?) and put it back into place, and it should be good as new. I hope.

[gekko]

I sure hope that this fixed it. Looking forward to the test.

[Crater Eddie]

I found the pesky stock IR filter and gave it a good cleaning (it was still cruddy) and reassembled the camera. Since the earlier tests were done on a blood smear slide I decided to test the cleaned camera with a similar slide. This photo was taken with the stock .5x reduction lens mounted on the 3mp USB camera, which is mounted on the Olympus BH2 trinoc, and using the 40x DPLAN objective. You can see that the horrible specks are gone. Huzzah! The image has a few other issues, but I was concentrating on the cleaning of the camera here.



Now, to more closely match the magnification level of the previous photos, I remover the stock .5x reduction lens assembly, installed the Olympus 2.5x photo eyepiece into the trinoc, and set the camera in place using the adapter I made for the E-P1 camera, it fit surprisingly well.



Not exactly the same mag as the previous images, but good enough for comparison. When focusing and navigating around the slide, I can see that there are still a few specks in the camera, but it is much better than it was. I am quite happy with the results.
CE

[gekko]

That looks great! And that is not an easy task as there is always dust floating around and the sensor and glass can also attract dust due to being electrostatically charged (certainly when the sensor is energized). Great job!

[Crater Eddie]

Thanks Gekko! It is a fiddly job getting everything clean, that's one reason I put it off so long. It could be better than it is, but I think I'll leave well enough alone, at least for now.
CE