A classical test object - the proboscis of a blowfly, a beautiful mount made by C M Topping. Looking through the eyepiece one can clearly see the spiracle-like structures in the radiating processes. This fine detail is lost in the digital image. Nonetheless some detail, such as the sensory hairs are captured quite well
A dark-field shot. The head of an insect. The slide is labelled 'Picnis'. I am not sure what this is, but I suspect some sort of parasite. The original microscope came with only a concave mirror, but I felt the optics merited a proper condenser, so I fitted a minicondenser fabricated from a camera lens, which enabled this dgi shot.
Incident light? No problem! The toplight for this shot of foraminifera was supplied by a simple bracket holding a Mini-Maglite torch. Even at 640X480 quite a lot of the delicate tracery of the shells is visible in the original picture, but is lost in the reduction of the shot to its present size
Polarising shots are easy. Polaroid below the condenser, and a piece resting on the eyepiece. A piece of mica (1+ wave plate!) when interposed, provides some spectacular colours from a granitic rock section

I Hope that these few shots from a low-cost (comparatively!) and low resolution digital camera will persuade you that a digital camera can be quite a useful accessory for the amateur microscopist.

Of course, by the time you read this megapixel cameras, capable of XGA, will be on sale at half the price I paid for my VGA camera, but such is the way of the electronics consumer industry!

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