On this page I briefly explain an efficient and powerful solution to obtain high quality digital photomicrographs on a microscope.
I use different cameras, one from SONY (DFW-X700, 1024x768 pixels, 15 frames per second, no longer in production), one from a company called The Imaging Source (DFK 41AF02, 1280x960 pixels, 7.5 frames per second), and more recently one from Ximea (xiQ, MQ042CG-CM, 2040x2024 pixels). These are so called c-mount digital video cameras and are primarily designed for machine vision applications. However, they can be connected to any microscope with a standard c-mount camera connector (see pictures), and are excellent for taking pictures and video sequences from a microscope.
These cameras are connected to a computer via the FireWire or USB port. This setup allows to have a full resolution preview window (make sure you have a screen big enough to display the entire image), and pictures are taken at the click of a button. The great thing about these cameras is that the pictures correspond exactly to what you saw on the preview window. I find this by far the most convenient set-up I have seen so far. Some special microscope cameras offer (sometimes considerably) higher resolution and higher sensitivity under low light conditions, but the convenience of a full-size preview at a decent frame rate with a simple software is hard to beat. Most of the pictures in the image galleries were taken with such a set-up, and we also used such pictures to make publication quality pictures.