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I got a new toy! A cool and inexpense USB objective microscope. This allows me to take pictures of tiny objects more easily than with a conventional Microscope.
A few years ago I bought a microscope called My First Lab Microscope, which is probably the best microscope you can get for under $100. I mean, I've used $100,000 microscopes and I was pretty impressed with this one. Anyway, it's a great tool, but not so good for group activities, so I decided to hook a web cam to it. Here is how I did it:
- Purchased a Microsoft VX-6000 Lifecam. This inexpensive webcam shoots 1 Megapixel photos and has a lens about the same size as the eyepiece on my Microscope. (My only regret is that it has a pretty wide field of view, so some of the pixels are wasted.)
- I downloaded MICAM, a freeware microscope photography application that is perfect for this activity.
- I loaded a test slide in the microscope, focused it, and held the camera up to the eyepiece. Then using MICAM, I adjusted the focus ring on the camera until the image was correctly focused in the viewer.
- I scotch-taped the camera to the eyepiece. (See the image at the right)
That's it! Easy!
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Now, once you have this set up, you can spend all kinds of time looking at random stuff under the microscope. Here's some stuff I did with my one kids. (Click the thumbnails for the full-sized images):
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