MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Hello everyone

I have a Leica MZ12 microscope with a HV photo tube attached (Wild product no. 180570) and want a setup so I can take photos of insects. I currently have a moticam 5 mp digital camera, but the photo quality is really bad when I take them through the eyepiece - even my mobilephone does a better job through the eyepiece. Therefore I am currently considering buying a Canon eos 2000d camera to attach to the photo tube (180570).

When I bought the microscope it came with an old photo setup attached to the HV photo tube (pictures attached); a Leica MPS 32 camera (the huge black and white box) on top of a photo tube adapter/eyepiece tube (Wild 445546) which had a leica photo eyepiece 10x (10445304) inside.

Of course the camera is pretty useless today, but can I still reuse the photo tube adapter (Wild 445546) with the photo eyepiece 10x (10445304) in a new setup with the Canon eos 2000d? Or what parts do I need to make a setup with the Canon eos 2000d work with my HV photo tube (180570)?

I am of course looking for the best and cheapest solution. I asked some companies but their solutions all cost me at least 1300 euros which I think is too much.

Best regards
Jesper Petersen

You're in luck. All you need is a 40mm canon pancake lens to go over the photo eyepiece and a 40mm clamp adapter to the filter threads. I'll link the one I use when I get home.
edit:
This clamps on the outside of the 445546, which has a 40mm OD, and threads directly into the filter threads of a 40mm pancake lens https://rafcamera.com/clamp-40mm-to-m52x0-75m
Note I have not tried this with the photo eyepiece, just with normal viewing eyepieces, but it should work the same (just presumably a little better with the proper photo eyepiece).

So a 40mm canon pankake lens(https://store.canon.co.uk/canon-ef-40mm ... /6310B005/) on the camera and a clamp adapter(https://rafcamera.com/clamp-40mm-to-m52x0-75m) on the the outside of 445546? Is that all? Just making sure I got it right.

Yup, that should do it--attach the lens and focus to infinity. The original lens used in its placd was a simple 60mm doublet which gives OK results but not quite as good in my experiments and it also enlarges the image far too much for asp-c. You can get that lens used for half the price or less.

Thanks, I will try it out. It is a very inexpensive solution compared to what some companies suggested me to buy.

Hmm... having read this topic (https://www.microbehunter.com/microscop ... f=9&t=7628) I am wondering if I could end up having the same problem connecting a Canon eos 2000d (APS-C-sensor) to a photo tube with a 10x eyepiece inside?

It's a pretty long thread and tbh I don't remember all the details exactly, bit I wouldn't worry about any of the issues he faces in there. The 40mm pancake acts like a reduction lens after the the 10x eyepiece, and together they produce a well sized image for your camera.
Edit: oh yeah, that thread. That one was messy because the seller of the microscope didn't actually have any hardware available for attaching a dslr to the system, so improvisation was necessary. This isn't the case for your scope, thr only tweak is swapping out the lens above the eyepiece for better framing on aps-c which is a pretty standard move these days. You might find that different lenses above the eyepiece would give slightly better or worse results, but unless you really want to spend a fair amount of time and effort optimizing the last percentage of image quality I would not worry about it.

Great! Thanks for clarifying.

It works like a charm by the way - Thanks alot Scarodactyl!