Why does my microscope camera show a much smaller field of view than the eyepiece?
Asked 7/9/2021
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When I attach a microscope camera to my microscope and view it on a monitor, the image looks much more zoomed in than what I see through the eyepiece. Even with the camera at its widest setting, I only see a small central portion of the specimen compared with the eyepiece view.
Microscope: Seiwa PS-888 Camera: Omano TMS-HDMI-1
Is this likely a setup/adapter issue, or is it mainly because the camera uses a very small sensor? Do microscope cameras typically need a reducer or specific C-mount adapter to match the eyepiece field of view?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
4y ago
2 Answers
1
Your microscope camera sports an imaging chip that is labeled 1/3 inch. This is a misleading nomenclature. It’s origin is the diameter of a glass vacuum tube used in TV cameras of the past. Your imaging chip’s measurements are approximately 3.5mm height by 4.66mm length.
Your 1/3 inch imaging chip is typical of low cost point-and-shoot still cameras.
For example, a high-end microscope camera sports a full frame imaging chip that measures 24mm height by 36mm length.
The best way to explain the difference is to compute the diagonal differenced thus: Your chip has a diagonal measure of 3.5mm. The full frame camera has a diagonal that measures 43.26mm.
The difference is: 43.26 ÷ 3.5 = 12.36. This value is called the crop factor or magnification factor. It tells us that your camera yields a tiny image that must be magnified 12 1/3 times to produce an image the same size as a full frame camera. Another way to state this: 1/12.36 X 100 = 8%. In other words, you camera's imaging chip is only 8% of the size of a full frame camera.
Originally by user44949. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user44949
4y ago
0
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This is most likely normal for your setup, not a fault. The main issue is the camera’s very small 1/3-inch sensor: it captures only the central part of the image projected by the microscope, so the monitor view appears much more “zoomed in” than the eyepiece view.
In other words, the microscope is producing a larger image circle than the sensor can cover, and your camera is only sampling the middle of it. That’s why cheap microscope cameras with small sensors often show a much narrower field of view.
A reducer adapter is the usual fix. For a small 1/3-inch sensor, a C-mount adapter with a reduction lens (often around 0.3x, depending on the eyepiece/tube setup) can widen the captured view to better match what you see through the eyepiece.
So: it’s probably not that anything is broken; it’s mostly a sensor-size/adapter mismatch. A larger-sensor microscope camera or the correct reduction adapter should improve the field of view.
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