OMAX - 5.0 MP Digital USB Microscope Camera with Advanced Software and Calibration Slide (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux Compatible) - A3550U

As a professor of BIology I have bought many expensive CCD cameras during the past 20 years for taking pictures of biological cells through microscopes. Until this OMAX camera, none has cost less than $3000; most cost much more. They all worked beautifully but the control software of virtually all required the windows operating system. This Omax 5.0MP camera is the equal of all these research grade cameras except as regards ultra high sensitivity. The expensive cameras (whose large size chips are cooled) can make pictures of very dim epifluorescence light if you let them take exposures many seconds long. But in any bright field application where you can turn up the light, this camera is the equal of any ccd camera I have used even though all those cameras cost between 20 to 120 times as much to buy. The control software is very easy to use, complete in the degree of control it provides, works on Apple or WIndows computers. The apple software does not make time lapse movies with arbitrary times between frames. But you don't need that feature. Just use the OMAX camera to make a continuous movie (which may occupy a gigantic file size). The OMAX delivers mpg format movies which you can transcode to any format you prefer. Then use a program such as Apple's (free) iMovie to speed up the movie, perhaps making several successive speedups to achieve the timelapse framerate you want. If you turn up the microscope light bright enough to make 100 millisecond exposures, you will get 8 frames per second out of this camera at it's highest 5MP resolution and fastest scan rate. The OMAX camera provides a true C-mount female thread. Into that C-mount thread you can screw the lens tube OMAX provides which you then slide into any standard eyepiece socket (using adapter collars provided). It records accurate colors or greyscale pictures and movies. The only con of this camera is that if you buy one now, it is so good that it could infuriate you if you bought much more expensive cameras in the past.

I worked in a biology lab, and we have several very high end microscopes, including one confocal from Leica; thus, I know a few things about capturing microscopy images. In general, a camera system that comes with major brand of microscope manufactures is very expensive, even though it is not thing but a simple box containing the sensor and the electronics. The image quality is limited by the objectives you already have on the scope. However, we pay big money of an integrated camera system and pay more for a microscope with a trinocular head over those that do not. Thus, this OMAX camera will save you thousands of dollars if you want to capture microscopy images. You replace one of the eyepieces with this, and captured images will be sent to your computer via a simple USB connection. Again the image quality is as good as your objective can deliver and you can use it on any microscopes you want. We have an old Olympus for examining IHC pathology samples. It does not have a trinocular head for a camera, but this OMAX camera changes all that. 5 MP is plenty of resolution so you can crop tissue images taken with a 5x objective to still see the cells. We mostly use it for light microscopy so we don't know how well it performs in low light (fluorescence). Highly recommended for any light microscopy.

Nice 'scope camera for PCB work. The included software would NOT work on Mac OS X Yosemite, and only after I emailed the manufacturer was I sent a link to download the latest version, which does work. This camera does NOT work with the EvoCam software, just FYI.

Like 3 frames per second... A cheaper cell phone could do better. I actually just used my cell in the eye piece for my online Bio classes. Returned.

Documentation is terrible. It works in Windows, but not on Linux. All the manual says is "Linux compatible" but I can't find any instructions on how to make it work in Linux, not in the manual, not in the internet. Very frustrating!

This is an excellent camera for the price. It provides very good resolution along with easy-to-use software that runs on both PC and MAC. The software allows good control over the white balance for the acquired image, and will allow you to take good photos through your microscope.

Much better camera than the old 1.3MP. Nice clear pictures. Thanks

Works great, easy set-up.