Innovation

[Greg Howald]

Amscope sells this touchpad camera system for $600.00. It looks kind of impressive.
I wondered.. Is it worth it?
I cut out a board 6 inches by 10 inches and cut a hole to mount a one inch electrical hardware romex connector. I mounted the connector to the board with the clamp upward. The cconnector goes over the photo tube. The clamp is tightened to the photo tube. Be careful. Not too tight. Don't damage the tube.
That gave me a platform to mount my own 10 inch windows tablet, complete with touchpad, mouse, keyboard, camera and HDMI connector. My cost $ 2.79.
So, at the end of the day, is the fancy $600.00 touchpad camera worth it?
Maybe, but to me, it's just a camera.

[Scarodactyl]

I like it. Much better value for the money!

[Greg Howald]

It was worth the effort.
Greg

[dtsh]

At one point I had one of my Raspberry Pi computers with a touchscreen mounted in a similar fashion; it is handy to have a screen dedicated to the imaging. Only reason it's not still on there is I needed to find a use for a 20" LCD monitor.

[PeteM]

Here's a somewhat similar approach to Greg's modification. An finite Olympus BHT was adapted to Olympus BX infinity optics with all viewing, composing, and image making done through a camera head - with an optional attached monitor of most any size. The cost of a new turret, infinity objectives, a broken infinity binocular head adapted to a Sony Nex, and the used but good condition camera body was around $500 for everything except the BHT stand -- far cheaper than buying something like an Olympus BX40 trinocular if you already have the finite scope.

The camera has a nice zoom feature that makes accurate focusing especially easy - just the push of one button. With a large monitor attached it makes a pretty nice setup. Direct projection to an APS-C sensor makes good use of the entire available field of view. The setup is especially convenient for image making with all controls easily accessible and a cheap remote release (under $10) to avoid movement from actuating the shutter. The camera itself is mirrorless with live view -- and better image quality (15mp and larger sensor size) than something like a $500 AmScope USB camera.

By swapping back a finite head and a finite turret, the microscope returns to a fully functional finite scope. Useful, say, if it had phase contrast or some other needed feature that would be more affordable in a finite scope.
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Olympus_InfinityModeSonySmall.jpg (52.07 KiB) Viewed 1957 times

[DonSchaeffer]

Most point and shoot cameras have very good viewers, many with touch screens. But boy I wish had the skill to make what you made. The trouble with point and shoot cameras is their video capability is limited.