Dark Spot In Photo:

[Rodney]

I seem to be getting this a lot lately. With any eyepiece I get this black spot. I have a blank slide on the stage and camera up to the front of the eyepiece. Any idea what causes it now? Just pointing the camera around the room works perfect.

Rodney

[75RR]

Is this what you see looking through the eyepiece without the camera?

[Rodney]

No, the only time I see this is when the camera is looking into the eyepiece. Seems to be a camera problem?? but i`m not sure what caused it, had been working ok as far as what I have doing. I know I have some vingetting problems but that has never caused this before.

Rodney

[75RR]

Can you take a closeup photo of a plain coloured surface, say a wall for example?

[Rodney]

Yes, thanks I will do that in auto mode and program mode.

Rodney

[Crater Eddie]

It looks to me like the camera is not well aligned with the microscope. You can see that the edge opposite the spot is out of focus.
I vote for an alignment issue.
CE

[Rodney]

Strange I have never seen this before, but the first photo is a gold colored wall in auto focus, the second is program mode. May not be enough light to pick up on the gold wall. All the other wall colors are lighter.

Rodney

[Rodney]

Those plants should be green. Second photo in program mode.

[75RR]

Crater Eddie could well be right. Camera looks fine.
Can you hold the camera over the eyepiece and take a photo. Just the camera and the eyepiece - nothing in between.

[Rodney]

Yes, thanks I will do that.

Rodney

[Rodney]

May be, no doubt the camera is picking up on some dust. Photo with just the eyepiece in line.

Rodney

[75RR]

Photo with just the eyepiece in line.

Hand held? No attachment to hold the camera?

Can you adjust the light source? Are you using a LED arrangement? Could one of the LEDs be out?

[Rodney]

OK this eyepiece is hand held up close to the front of this camera. Also seems to me not any change in how many lights I use or even one light as long as they are bright enough to view the object. What I want to do is take a picture of the front lens of this camera and tell me what you think. I will try to take a picture of the front lens of this camera.

Rodney

[Rodney]

Front lens of this camera reflected off of a mirror, other than needs a little cleaning would all this front glass cause a problem?

Rodney

[75RR]

Lens looks ok to me.
You can do another wall test if you like, only this time no plants and make sure the camera is at 90 degrees to the wall.
Can you centre the light and add a diffuser - translucent piece of plastic from a milk carton, lid from a salted peanut can or something similar will do.
Cameras can pick up more than we can see - uneven light can be magnified by the camera.

[Rodney]

I think you may be right about that, for me it can be a little tricky. I will take one more photo of the wall and play around with what you said over the week end. With the hand held eyepiece photo a brown cabinet was in line so it looks like that. Must be a little something i`m doing that caused the original problem.
But thanks,

Rodney

[Rodney]

Other than the color of the wall is not correct the camera seems to be ok, picked up on a few spots on the wall that I did not notice. You are right about picking up on light, notice the bright light reflection on the wall from the light above out of view.

Rodney

[75RR]

Is this your AO Spencer 15 you are using?
From the image in the My microscope section it does not seem to have a light source. What are you using?
Can you take a photo of your light source?

Also seems to me not any change in how many lights I use or even one light as long as they are bright enough to view the object.

From what I have read the two most important/critical parts of a microscope are the objective and the light source.
One can not be too careful about the light source.

Setting the White Balance will help with getting the colour of the wall right.

[Rodney]

No I haven`t taken any pictures with the 15, I mostly use LED`s like in this photo with one of my microscopes a Baush and Lomb. I also use top LED`s. Does the same thing in the stereo scope. I have never had a dark spot in the stereo scope before either but I do now. I may need to go back through my camera settings again.

[75RR]

Centre the light as well as you can and try out a diffuser. Post a photo tomorrow.
None of your wall photos show this problem.

[Rodney]

OK good, I should be able to centre the light and I do have a blue microscope diffuser. Just looking back at the first photo the light is off center.

I will take another photo a little later in the week.
Thanks for the help

Rodney

[75RR]

I will take another photo a little later in the week.
Thanks for the help

No problem.

Remember that one wants even illumination over the whole field of view.
If you need more light increase the overall intensity of the light - do not narrow the beam.
Set the field diaphragm opening to the objective you are using.

This is a nice tutorial: http://zeiss-campus.magnet.fsu.edu/tuto ... flash.html

[Rodney]

I was able to center the light a little better and spread out a larger area of light. Just looking at a test area with any eyepiece all looks good. But so far I have not been able to remove the darker image when I mount the camera. The camera keeps jumping in and out of focus and you can actually hear it. Looks like to me the camera is confused on what to focus on. Never had this problem before with the other images I posted. As soon as I can catch a picture I will post it.

Rodney

[75RR]

Do not use auto-focus. Set focus at infinity.

[Rodney]

OK could very well be infinity setting. Camera controls got Bumped around a little so something may be off. I will go back through the manual and see where i`m at.
thanks,

Rodney

[Rodney]

Well I went back in and made several camera setting changes that went back into default it seems. Looks like I am back where I was before the problem, perhaps better. You may be able to tell. I do have the light evened out and infinity was turned off. I`m not finished yet but what setting do you use for ISO for microscopy work. I use a low setting. This photo is a small snapshot in program mode infinity.

[75RR]

That does look better. It would be nicer if it were illuminated to the edges.
It seems you have some inadvertent Oblique going on. (Something blocking part of the light)

Does your camera have a zoom function? If it does you might want to try and zoom in a bit - if you can zoom enough you should be able to get an image without the black border.

Lower is better in terms of image quality. 200 is good, if you have to go a bit higher that is fine.
One generally increases ISO in order to be able to take images in low light.

[Rodney]

Looks like the light is going out a little better now. ISO is set at 200. I took this picture a few hours ago. I just notice a little light circle now. Sort of looks like I have a few minor problems that I will need to experiment with to get it better. I will try a little zoom and see how that works out and check out alignment, lights, etc. over the next days and weeks. Just want to thank you for a nice lesson. I will exit this topic and start a new one later if needed.
thanks a lot,

Rodney

[gekko]

I think you are getting much better pictures now. If I may suggest something: when you are experimenting with different zooms as suggested above in order to maximize the filed of view (and minimize vignetting), you want to try, at each zoom setting, different distances the camera is held from the eyepiece in order to arrive at the best zoom/distance setting combination. Changing the camera distance can also have a big effect on the field of view it captures. I agree with the advice of using the lowest ISO setting your camera has for best image quality (but you may need higher ISO for capturing moving subjects at high shutter speeds).

[Rodney]

Thanks gekko for the extra information. That is what makes it interesting to find a few more options to make images and techniques a little better, I would guess that will never change. I`m just a flunky at it but I do love anything biology related. Very good talent on this forum.

Rodney