Sony APS-C on Swift Trinocular

[SteveN]

Hi,

after some playing around with a simple USB "Microscope" I already had and observing some tardigrades, ciliates and synurids plus watching a whole lot of youtube videos on the topic I decided to get a better microscope.

After reading posts here and watching videos of Oliver I concluded on a Chinese trinocular model (because I enjoy taking images and videos) like the SWIFT SW380T to keep it as budget friendly as possible (although it does not feature inifinity plan objectives or Köhler illumination, future upgrade path? ). I should be able to add features like dark field/oblique/polarized illumination to it by myself.

I read many threads about other cases of camera adaption but the whole deal seems to be very microscope model and camera specific (FOV, intermediate image plane location, sensor size, ...). Although a very good general read in my opinion was Olivers blog article+video on the topic and this thread including its linked resources.

Now to my actual question:
Are there any experiences here with adapting a Sony APS-C mirrorless camera (A6300 in my case) to one of these Swift trinoculars, be it afocal or direct?

[Hobbyst46]

to keep it as budget friendly as possible (although it does not feature inifinity plan objectives or Köhler illumination, future upgrade path? ). I should be able

Although this is not the actual question, IMHO Kohler illumination is a very important upgrade, in general and especially for photography. Infinity-corrected optics is less important. Infinity-corrected optics is benefical for direct projection installation of the camera, because it removes the need for a compensating eyepiece.

[SteveN]

Thanks for the input. I too noticed that Köhler illumination is an important feature for photography. But it drives the price up significantly from about 250€ to 500+€ (at least from my research, I am from Germany, AmScope unfortunatly doesn't seem to be easily accessible from here).

[apochronaut]

Koehler is an artifact of a change in microscope illumination systems. It didn't exist before the move to filament sources of illumination and is simply a technique to get those sources to work better.
The idea of Koehler illumination being a game changer , in terms of whether one can take good bad or indifferent pictures through a microscope is only the case, if one has no other recourse to tools with which to refine their illumination beam. One can take the same quality of pictures whether there is Koehler or not. You just need to make the appropriate alterations to your method and those are often quite simple ones.

Koehler has been beaten to death on this forum as some amazing tool , one cannot do without. All Koehler does is provide a technique for creating an even background illumination from a thin filament source of illumination. A ground glass filter or dispersion screen in many cases will do as well. Koehler , also is a way of getting a crappy abbe condenser to do a better job. Theoretically, an led illumination system could easily be made to not require Koehler, so the fact that microscopes that have an led lighting source do not mention Koehler is not a defect, it is a default situation.

Koehler should be well down the list of neccessary desirables in a microscope. Plan optics, higher precision in the graduated systems, reverse nosepiece, 5 hole nosepiece, decent sized stage, a field greater than 20mm and a good warranty and backup would all sit above Koehler in my book. There have been many fine microscopes in the past that did not use or require Koehler in order to function extremely well.

[wporter]

+1, Apo. Well stated.

[micro]

I have a swift 380T and a lumix g85 camera. There are a lot of camera adapter options out there and they are mostly chinese garbage. Cheap chinese microscopes = good but cheap chinses adapters = bad to medium quality images. Some of the adapters are ridiculously expensive too. LMscopes sell their own for like $1,000 and I'll never know if they are good because its too much money to risk. Do you already have the camera or are you thinking of buying it? As far as attaching any camera goes you just have to figure out a way to place the camera over the trinocular port without needing an adapter. I've been thinking about carving something out of wood for my setup. I got a chinese adapter from amazon for $120 that had a 2x zoom factor but that turned out to be overkill for micro 4/3 cameras so I removed the glass. I am able to use that same adapter now but the issue is the camera is not in focus with the eyepieces which can affect image quality. I still haven't been able to perfect the camera image quality though and it is driving me insane. Long story short using a dslr can be really disappointing because it can be almost impossible to figure out the right configuration to get images that match the quality of your eyes looking through the eyepieces. People have told me its better to spend money on a better microscope then buy a better camera but I have been thinking about just being like screw and might bring my microscope to best buy and try all their cameras with my microscope to see how they compare with my lumix g85. To sum up don't expect to be able to pair a dslr to a microscope without a huge amount of trial and error.

[75RR]

+1, Apo. Well stated.

Are we to understand that you do not set up Köhler on your microscope?

[SteveN]

Thanks for sharing your experiences micro!

LMscopes sell their own for like $1,000 and I'll never know if they are good because its too much money to risk.

Yes I saw that one

Do you already have the camera or are you thinking of buying it?

I already have the camera, I am normally using it for photography.

I am able to use that same adapter now but the issue is the camera is not in focus with the eyepieces which can affect image quality.

Yes, that's a common problem without a projection eyepiece in the adapter as far as i understand the optics.

To sum up don't expect to be able to pair a dslr to a microscope without a huge amount of trial and error.

That's what I recognized from other threads, and is the reason why I asked for specific insight regarding my exact (or comparable) combination. Maybe we can find someone with a working solution!