Why not just use my smartphone camera instead?
Modern smart phone cameras have many times more megapixels than the AF51 and can
give good quality photographs for illustration purposes – sometimes even better looking
pictures than with the AF51.
The main limitations in using a smart phone is that these imaging systems are not
designed for scientific or quantitative imaging and they are heavy and awkward to mount,
especially on a 3D printed PUMA microscope where they will require some additional
means of support to support their weight and avoid distorting the microscope frame and
aggravating image ‘wobble’ (this is not such a problem with standard metal lab
microscopes).
Regarding quantitative imaging for scientific applications you will need access to an
uncompressed image stream from the camera as well as the ability to save that image in
an uncompressed format to avoid artefacts (see chapter 7 of this manual), the ability to
measure a dark current image and flat field image with multi-frame averaging manual
control of exposure, colour balance, etc. and the ability to maintain a good signal even in
low light levels (see chapters 6 and 7 of this manual). All this can be done with the AF51
and PARD Capture software. If you can do all too that with your smartphone camera and
have it well mounted on the microscope then I see no advantage of using the AF51 over
such a device for taking the odd picture. However, there are other advantages. The AF51
costs less than a high end smartphone and you can use multiple AF51 mounted on
multiple eyepieces on the same microscope due to its light weight and small size. You can
kit out a class or lab with multiple AF51’s without having to have multiple smart phones.
You can leave the AF51 on a scope in a lab or culture hood or on a robot to image over
long periods where you would not want to leave a smartphone. The ease of coupling the
AF51 to a standard computer for an image analysis workflow and automation, the use of
the PARD Capture software to control the AF51 with its many conveniences for scientific
imaging, multi-platform SDK for custom programming, etc.
OptArc AF51 Camera Page 20 of 99 User Guide v1.02
