Questions about OMAX USB Microscope camera Quality!

[rabitt]

As a member of the forum since 3/12/16 I still consider myself a newbie.
On one of my early posts I had a question about setting up the ToupView software for correct
Camera operation. The response / help from members was tremendous, Thank you.

I received my OMAX camera 1/21/16 and since that time haven’t been able to achieve
White Balance, with Blue & Red being the problem. Since that time I have received
several comments regarding my white balance settings & the color of my photos.

After an extensive internet search I found a site where the person compared his OMAX
14.0MP USB3 camera with a 0.5X adapter to a Nikon D800 using micrometer sample images.
His Images show exactly what I’ve been dealing with and haven’t been able to correct. This is
The blog with the info and photos.

https://votecharlie.com/blog/2016/06/st ... mages.html

I guess a question I have for Forum members with AmScope USB cameras; do you have the
Same or similar problem?

Other OMAX owners out there; have you encountered the same problem & solved or
minimized it to some extent ?

I’ll be looking for your comments.
Rich B

___________________________________
AmScope M200B-MS Converted to LED
Camera OMAX A3550U 5mp
AmScope T340B-DK-LED

[kit1980]

As a member of the forum since 3/12/16 I still consider myself a newbie.
On one of my early posts I had a question about setting up the ToupView software for correct
Camera operation. The response / help from members was tremendous, Thank you.

I received my OMAX camera 1/21/16 and since that time haven’t been able to achieve
White Balance, with Blue & Red being the problem. Since that time I have received
several comments regarding my white balance settings & the color of my photos.

After an extensive internet search I found a site where the person compared his OMAX
14.0MP USB3 camera with a 0.5X adapter to a Nikon D800 using micrometer sample images.
His Images show exactly what I’ve been dealing with and haven’t been able to correct. This is
The blog with the info and photos.

https://votecharlie.com/blog/2016/06/st ... mages.html

I guess a question I have for Forum members with AmScope USB cameras; do you have the
Same or similar problem?

Other OMAX owners out there; have you encountered the same problem & solved or
minimized it to some extent ?

I’ll be looking for your comments.
Rich B

___________________________________
AmScope M200B-MS Converted to LED
Camera OMAX A3550U 5mp
AmScope T340B-DK-LED

I have exactly the same problem with the same camera. I think the camera is badly designed, and that causes this color problem - red on one side and blue on another.

I tried a different C-mount adapter with the camera - the same problem.
I'm afraid the only way to really solve this is to get a different camera.
As a workaround you could try to make a picture of an empty slide and "subtract" it from photos in post-processing.
And I'm sure this camera has more problems besides this more obvious one (for example, I see chromatic aberrations on photos that are not seen in eyepieces).

[rabitt]

Thanks for the quick response, hopefully we will hear from more people.
I haven't written my review on Amazon yet and will in the near future.

[mrsonchus]

Hi, I also have this problem using an otherwise excellent ToupCam 2mp, with no optics I have the problem and with a focusable adapter (enables changes of FOV to be altered and of course parfocality to be set if desired) I also have the problem.

Switching to a Canon EOS 1200D I have three options available to me;
1) the Canon without optics (vignetting must be cropped but a big FOV) - no sign of the problem at all.
2) the Canon with a x2 'all purpose' reduction lens - again no sign of the problem whatsoever.
3) the canon with a x2.5 Meiji projection eyepiece - no sign at all of the problem at all. Incidentally the Meiji seems to give images with far less CA (e.g. 'rainbows' around high-contrast edges) than the other options, although they also have so little CA that it's not an issue.

So for my money I'd suggest the camera is the problem - it's certainly stopped me from buying a 5mp Toupcam USB3....

There's a superb and totally free utility that will enable these problems to be 'subtracted' from the image - it's called the 'Olympus Background Subtraction Tool' and is very good - you can position variable numbers of variable-sized sampling points around the image (on the background to be evened-out (i.e. removed)) and the software will remove the variations of the background for your entire image - and it works!

Here's a link http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/digi ... nload.html- this may be quite a life-saver - it was for me!

[rabitt]

Thank you John B,
I tried to down load the program but my antivirus believes it to be a virus and blocks it.
Will have to find out why and try again.

Managed to unblock program downloaded OK

Rich B

[Culicoides]

I also downloaded this software (which sounds great) without any problem but it won't run on my laptop. I'm running win 7 with avg antivirus. This is said to be for Windows; perhaps it won't run on win 7 (or later?) Has anyone else tried this? If anyone else has got it working I'll try again.
Many thanks John B for the link.

[mrsonchus]

I also downloaded this software (which sounds great) without any problem but it won't run on my laptop. I'm running win 7 with avg antivirus. This is said to be for Windows; perhaps it won't run on win 7 (or later?) Has anyone else tried this? If anyone else has got it working I'll try again.
Many thanks John B for the link.

Hi, yes I have been running it for ages with a Windows 7 64-bit Acer Laptop and coincidentally I use (or used as I've very recently given this machine to our Daughter and now have a Windows 10 Lenovo Laptop) AVG free antivirus with it (i.e. on the same Windows 7 machine).

I suspect that that the program itself is very undemanding upon much specific to recent operating systems as it really relies primarily upon processing (CPU) and uses only basic user-interface features. I'll install it on this Windows 10 machine also and see how it runs - back soon.

[mrsonchus]

Hi again, I've installed it in Windows 10 and my system said it will not run without a 'Java run-time module' (the background code that enables Java by interpreting and executing Java code at the time of running)...
This is very easy to either install or update (don't try to verify it's installation using Chrome browser as that browser doesn't support Java - Java will still run perfectly OK with programs that use it, but not the Chrome browser). Simply go to this link (I just downloaded and installed Java on my Windows 10 system (64 bit) and the background subtraction software runs perfectly after this is done).

Here's a link to the required Java runtime download -> https://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp this will install the prerequisite for the Olympus program to run....

I'll post a before and after image here ASAP to give you an idea of how it works - it's a very simple program to use...

back soon..

[Crater Eddie]

Thanks for this John. My upgrade to Win10 killed this Olympus tool for me and I haven't been able to use it since. I'll try this to see if it fixes it.
CE

[mrsonchus]

Hi yet again, well, I've installed and used the program to remove a 'purpl-ish' background from an old picture take with the ToupCam and here are some screen-snips and picture results.
A note, the program will produce a result in the PS 'PSD' format - which I load into PSE-9 and save as .jpg as usual....

This is the program's (desktop) icon and start-screen snipped,

prog icon and start screen snip.JPG (65.3 KiB) Viewed 9159 times

This is a loaded image and it's proposed background (that will be subtracted) shown in the RH panel. The squares in the LH panel are the sampling-points (up to 11 and of user-chosen size) as I've dragged them over representative parts of the background.

image loaded.JPG (79.99 KiB) Viewed 9159 times

This is the 'fixed' image which now has a white background - the brightness of the resultant image may also be chosen by the user,

new image previewed.JPG (88.72 KiB) Viewed 9159 times

I have set the 'number of levels' increase a touch too high and the output is a little too bright I think.

Here are the original and final images for comparison (remember the result is gives as 'PSD and must be converted to jpg (load then save as .jpg using PS)..
Original with dodgy background,

original-image.jpg (203.39 KiB) Viewed 9159 times

'fixed' image with purple background subtracted,

background removed.jpg (209.65 KiB) Viewed 9159 times

Here I've used and image with quite a smooth background - but the result with the typical blue-to-red problem woork axactly as this has - it's a super little utility.

I hope this helps a little.

[apochronaut]

I have a technical comment. Cameras, and sensors, irregardless of the quality are based on receiving a symmetrical image and passing it on or storing it. Unsymmetrical aspects in an image capture are usually the result of misalignment of some kind. The relatively symmetrical chromatic aberration pattern , which the micrometer image displays, is due to a symmetrical lack of peripheral correction in an achromatic system. That problem is more or less corrected with the plan objectives, due to their better peripheral corrections.
The unsymmetrical background colour shift from blue to red across the field, is unlikely to be caused by optical design. It is more likely caused by mis-alignment in the illumination system. Omax microscopes, have fairly crude illumination systems, often not kohler and make use of abbe condensers, which confer a lot of spherical and chromatic aberration to the image background. The fact that this is not readily apparent to the eye but shows up upon image capture, is due to the over sensitivity of the the camera to colour shifts, which the eye tends to even out. The camera will still see this , even if the colour shift is adjusted to be symmetrical but it would be in a more circular pattern. Using a blue filter and or diffusion filter between the illumination window and the condenser, might help to even things out as well as attending to a critical alignment of the illumination system.

[mrsonchus]

Hi Apo' - you've touched upon an area that I'm interested in, in order to attempt to improve my system - the fact that I have a cheapo abbe condenser. I would very much like to upgrade this - the condenser carriage diameter of my 'scope is 37mm - have you any idea how I may proceed old chap?

[kit1980]

The unsymmetrical background colour shift from blue to red across the field, is unlikely to be caused by optical design. It is more likely caused by mis-alignment in the illumination system.

I believe it's a camera problem for 2 reasons:
- the problematic pattern stays in the same place in the image when the camera is rotated
- several people reported (with photos) the problem disappeared after switching to a different camera

I agree it's unlikely to be caused by optical design. But there are probably a non-optical problem with the camera, like one end of the sensor is too close to a heat source or something like that.

[apochronaut]

If it was heating of the sensor, or a sensor related problem, then the colour banding pattern would rotate through the image field, as the camera was rotated. The fact that another camera does not produce the same colour banding problem( possibly similar but less dramatic?), could be due to the other camera having a greater dynamic range capability, so has less tendency to over or under saturate colours at each end of the spectrum. This does imply yes, a poor camera design but evening out the illumination, so that the camera's inadequacies are minimized, might go a long way towards fixing the problem, in lieu of buying into another camera.

[kit1980]

If it was heating of the sensor, or a sensor related problem, then the colour banding pattern would rotate through the image field, as the camera was rotated.

The pattern stays in the same place on the image - so it rotates with the camera.
I mean blue is always on the left of the photo and red is always on the right, in exactly same locations.

Like imagine there is a dust particle on a sensor corner that corresponds to a top left corner of the photo. If you rotate the camera, the dust particle is always in the top left corner of the photo. If there is a dust particle on the microscope objective, it will go to different corners of the photo when camera rotates.

[rabitt]

Once I downloaded the program I found their " Olympus Interactive Background Subtraction Toolkit ".
Haven't tried it yet. Should help the learning curve.
I'm running 7 on my laptop.
Rich B

[Gasman]

Hi guys
Thanks for the link to this useful app. Just tried some shots of cells on my 64 bit Win 10 (with anniversary update) pc and works great!

cheekcellsminusbackground.png (255.72 KiB) Viewed 9117 times

cheers
Steve

[mrsonchus]

You've got it Steve! Remember also that the sampling-points (squares in LH panel) may be resized to get a larger/smaller sample average and re-positioned anywhere you choose to place them upon a piece of the image you would like to be subtracted as part of the background..

It's a seriously useful little utility! Good work old chap!