Just Got My USB Microscope Camera !

Well I got mine. Got it plugged in. Windows 7 64bit recognizes it. Even works as a web camera. But the software wont see it and I cant find any freeware software that takes advantage of the high resolution. They all wanna stop at 640x480 or something similar. :(

I'll keep attacking the problem but I am running out of ideas.

I tried finding new drivers. Nothing listed for windows 7 64bit except one site that I think may have just been one of those search term scammers that makes you think they have it but they dont. They wanted me to download some piece of software that scanned my whole computer for driver upgrades. No thanks.

Supposedly Irfanview lets you capture video at any resolution the camera supports but it only wants a TWAIN support and if I cant find basic drivers finding TWAIN drivers (outdated capture technology) is highly unlikely.

Anyone have any ideas? Software to try if the default doesn't work? Places to get 64bit drivers?

Thanks for any help. Looks good as a webcam but obviosly need the high resolution.

I think we can attribute a lot of technical problems with this to either bad installation or user error.. But Wow looks like you've done a Whole Lot in a Really Short amount of time. Just an observation but, I assume you have another camera setup you've been using before this, and just curious as to how much time and experimentation you invested in that before you got a good shot? And how many materials and improvisations did you have to do to get a "set up" built?

Here's my point, I think with an equal investment in time and experimentation you can achieve a variety of good quality professional results. And do it without an elaborate hodgepodge set up of lights and improvised equipment. Basically just using the scope and a light source.

I took a few "quick" photos of a similar 2012 Lincoln Cent on white background as a demonstration. These are RAW photos, no post processing. Scope software on default settings and auto whit balancing. The only thing I did was I re-sized them for the web with a program that came with Windows 7. I could have tweaked them further and made them look better with the same program, but I chose not to for this demonstration.

The first photo is with the scopes LED lights on Low. As you can see the lights, even on low, are way too bright for shiny coins. And since the scope is so close, the reflection floods back into the lense and washes everything out.

The second shot is with the LED off and my table lamp as the light source.

The third photo is same as the second except I used a white envelope to reflect the light directly onto the coin.

Very quick simple setup. Equipment used; Scope, Lamp, Piece of paper.....

You


I was refering to your play by play of the install, troubleshooting, setup, search for drivers, search for software, resolution problems, post processing, comparisons, reviews..... Sounded like a lot of work.


I'll try to make this brief, I don't want to turn this into a computer repair thread
64 bit operating systems with 64 bit processors will run both 32 bit AND 64 bit applications with no problem.
The reason that 32-bit will always run on 64-bit is that the 64-bit components have been designed to work that way. So the newer 64-bit systems are backward-compatible with the 32-bit systems (which is the main reason most of us haven't moved to 64-bit software).
An example of backward compatibility is Windows 64-bit. It has software called WOW64 that provides compatibility by emulating a 32-bit system. Both Windows 7 64 / Vista 64 Support 32-bit Applications.
But not forward compatible, meaning you won't be able to run 64 bit on 32 bit....... Did you read my comment on how 90% of issues are installation or user error?


Maybe I forgot to mention that the table lamp I am using is an LED lamp.. The scope is geared by default for LED lighting.


One reason your color is off may be you are using the wrong lighting for this USB, it's default settings are geared for the LED lights. I couldn't get color right with anything but daylight and LED..... Zoom can not just be adjusted through the software but also simply by moving the scope further or closer to coin...... There was no cropping all I did was re-size photo to under 400x400 pixels, did absolutely nothing to alter the look of the photo, just made it smaller.

Ahh no. It wasnt. that was just following a logical progression from A to B to C to solve a problem to its solution. For me a lot of work is recoding a 100,000 entry database for an MMORPG while its running live and trying not to crash the economy of the gamers already playing. Ask me about my 5 million dollar hammer LOL. After all that, "A Lot Of Work" took on a whole new meaning lol.





Actually thats not entirely true. I have several programs that do not run on a 64bit system and only run on 32bit. One particularly I had to contact the creator and have him add code for the 64bit version of windows 7 because he didnt realize there was a market for it. If it were truly backwards compatable then we could run the original versions of Doom and Quake because they all ran on XP and Windows 7 is supposed to be backwards compatable with Vista and XP. Even with the compatability modes checked they wont run anymore with out an emulator.

To keep with the idea of not turning this into a computer repair thread lol my reason for stating all of that Not a Lot of Work was for people who may or may not be having similar problems. If I ran into the problem someone else might have too. Some of the point of the previous parts of this thread in my opinion was geared towards installation and setup issues so I thought I was just contributing to the thread lol. doesn't especially matter. We can drop now if we like hehe.




Yah. Would have been usefull information hehe. We dont have any lights in the entire house that LED so I hadnt even thought of LED lightbulbs for table lamps until I saw the Jansjo's and even then I didnt know they were that common. We're mostly still using the old fashion filament ones hehe.




Yeah thats why I am waiting for the jansjo's. They are a good chance to try some serious high qaulity LED lighting. It hit me the reason the white background turned blue is the LEDs on the microscope have a blue tint to them. That was the problem I had trying to buy 'white' LED lamps in target and using them for my box mujumba, they were all blue and not really white.


@daniels Sounds good. I'm hoping to pull off no need for post processing with the jansjo's but if its needed I'll look into your software. :)

I turned off the auto white balancing because it gave that steel cent look to it. But the ones where the coin looks brownish to reddish, those are all without the AWB and the background still looks blue even though its always white. I used both a shiny white and a matt white surface and both came out about the same.

Btw, my Jansjo's arrived today, they look like LED flashlights on snake poles lol. Reminds me of the creatures from the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory books, think it was the sequel that had them lol. Look like they definetely could be helpful though. Given that its Ikea and not a knock off Chinese company making them, I'm hoping the light thrown by them is actually white and not blue tint. We'll see I'll work on those later.

Schwanke I'm betting the pink pics you took are from incandescent light bulbs. I changed out my overhead room light with them and my pics immediately went pink. I freaked tiill I realized it must be the incandescent and put my cfl's back in. That was it.

I have been using 'Photoscape' software for the last week to crop some photos taken with a USB microscope (200x) and found it to be if not perfect at least great fun.! The ability to 'practice' is a great learning tool and then to repair by hitting the 'undo all' and start over until you are happy with the results works for me. Adds a new dimension to our hobby.!