Photography through the microscope is taking photographs of biological, medical and general sciences for research, educational, industrial and commercial applications.

“Micro” means tiny, “scope” refers to view or look at. To enlarge images of small objects so as they can be viewed better and studied, microscopes are the tools used. Today, microscopes vary from a simple magnifying glass to the expensive electron microscope. The most common instrument used in education today, is the compound light microscope. It is made up of two lenses, which magnifies, and a variety of knobs to resolve (focus) the picture. It is a simple piece of equipment easy to use and understand.

Photographing through a microscope consist of special set of important things to consider. The type of equipment to be used, getting the equipment to work together, lighting, focusing, shutter release and a many others. Compatibility of the equipment; the camera and the microscope must work together to capture and produce the image. To work together the camera and microscope must be attached to the scope. C-mount is a microscope designed to have cameras attached to them. This type of mount is able to attach directly to a 35mm camera body. But most of the problem is that the consumer level digital cameras do not have a 35mm lens mount. Because of this, another possible point of attachment is to the microscope eyepiece. This is especially possible on the dissecting scope, which has bigger ocular openings than compound scope. Once you have attached the camera to the scope and have a working system. It includes what type and system of lighting that you will use, the releasing of the shutter of the camera to reduce camera shake, methods used to control focus, exposure and the color of the image.

The camera should have a tripod socket, the point where in the camera is attached. A stable adapter that has a tripod mounts for the camera at one end is important. The attachment point on the microscope allows the “head” of the microscope to move up and down to focus.

To attach the lens of the camera to the eyepiece of the microscope, again an adapter is needed. Three important criteria in choosing it; it must be safe for both the optics of the camera and the microscope, for possible scratching, the adapter must help prevent it to happen. Next, must be stable enough to prevent camera shake and lastly, the adapter should block extraneous light from entering the camera from the gap between the lens and eyepiece. The lens diameter of the camera should be more or less equal to or less than the diameter of the microscope eyepiece opening. This is important because pictures are being taken in rectangular form, while the camera has a circular lens. This rectangle should fit inside the diameter of the camera lens and also must fit inside the diameter of the microscope eyepiece. If the rectangle doesn’t fit, you will experience vignetting, that is the picture of your subject framed by a circle with black edges filling in the rectangle. The diameters must be close to avoid it. This is possible if the camera has zoom capabilities. Shrinking the whole area of the rectangle will be effective if the camera will be zoomed all the way using the smaller portion of the total lens area. Zooming the camera lens internal or external, is an important thing to consider. External zoom is by using the camera in and out as a telescope. For photo microscopy, internal zoom is used. The amount of manual control of the camera also matters. Things like aperture, shutter speed, white balance, focus, and flash the better the quality of the images and the more versatile the setup the camera has, the more control you have. Taking pictures through microscope, camera’s automatic color system will be off.

The most important thing to consider in a microscope for this method is the size of the eyepieces. The diameter of the eyepiece should be of the same size of the camera lens. The versatility the set up of the microscope is important in the change of magnification of the different sizes of subjects. And lastly, the optical quality of the scope that plays very important part in photography.