Anyone tried shooting macro with a microscope objective?

[Peeb]

From what I understand, you take the microscope lens and mount it to the front of your existing camera lens with an adapter and shoot that way. My research shows the following issues:

1) working distance. Make sure you don't have to be 1.5mm away from the subject, or something.
2) additional adapters. Some objectives require an additional correctional lens or insert to work.
3) achromatic correction is preferred.
4) magnification. They sell 2x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 20, 40x, 100x. I'm currently interested in the 10x, tho I should really probably start with the 4x honestly.

Anything else you've run across that I need to consider?

 

[Overread]

You might also check out these forums www.photomacrography.net :: Index

Microscope objectives can be used very well for some very high magnification macro photography. But its a whole other world of macro and choices. In general most people might play around with it but not take it too seriously, so this is one of those cases where sometimes you have to find a specialist group to get some detailed feedback.
(which is not to say that we don't have users here on site that have done it, but that chances are we've likely only a couple so your thread might not get noticed).

Also note most people will use them with a microscope; so taking it off and building adaptors is a whole other area yet again.

 

[smoke665]

I've read a.few pieces about attaching a web cam to the eye piece on microscopes and telescopes with various low tech methods (duct tape). The ones I saw worked fairly well. For really sharp macros with good DOF you almost need to use focus stacking

 

[Peeb]

I've read a.few pieces about attaching a web cam to the eye piece on microscopes and telescopes with various low tech methods (duct tape). The ones I saw worked fairly well. For really sharp macros with good DOF you almost need to use focus stacking

Yeah, I recently saw an amazing stack of 120 images

 

[Peeb]

Here is the kind of rig I'm talking about:

 

[petrochemist]

From what I understand, you take the microscope lens and mount it to the front of your existing camera lens with an adapter and shoot that way. My research shows the following issues:

1) working distance. Make sure you don't have to be 1.5mm away from the subject, or something.
2) additional adapters. Some objectives require an additional correctional lens or insert to work.
3) achromatic correction is preferred.
4) magnification. They sell 2x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 20, 40x, 100x. I'm currently interested in the 10x, tho I should really probably start with the 4x honestly.

Anything else you've run across that I need to consider?

There are two classes of microscope objective, the 'infinite' ones should be mounted in front of another lens (focused at infinity). 'Finite' ones are normally mounted 160mm from the sensor without any other optics.

My one is a finite objective, but I got the wrong adapter at first so tried it with a lens. It did work but I needed to be in contact with a TV screen to focus on the pixels - nothing else was bright enough to see. Magnification was extreme - I suspect starting with a 2x might be better!

There are of course other things to consider in choosing your objective ELWD (extra long working distance) is a good choice, then biological ones are designed to shoot through a cover glass, metalligcal ones are not...

Have a look at Good microscope objectives for extreme macro photography for a more knowledgeable summary.

 

[Dave442]

Outside of the lens issue is the focus and lighting. I usually see people using stepper motor rails that the camera sits on to help with the set of images to stack, the more automated the better. Then a set-up to hold the object to be photographed in front of the lens - like flexible cables with something to hold the object.