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Kate -We use the same camera as you for through the objective TIRF system.
I love it, low noise, tiny pixles, and a lot of them.  We also recently got
a roper 512b for the same tirf system.  it is great for tirf because the
signal to background in the image is so great to begin with- not as good on
spinning disk where contrast is not as good as tirf. The exposure times on
orca II ERG for a speckle image were ~500 ms, with the 512b they are on the
order of 25 ms to get the same speckle modulation. The main problem issue is
that the pixels are so big on 512b compared to orca type (~13 vs ~6 um) that
we had to modify the microscope to get nyquist satisfied.  With all that mag
and only a 512 chip, we end up seeing only a very very small area of a cell.
I have been bugging camera companies for more real estate on those EM chips.
The 1k x1k em chip is too noisy compared to the 512. 

Don't know if any of this helps

Clare M. Waterman-Storer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Laboratory for Cell Motility Studies
Department of Cell Biology CB163
The Scripps Research Institute
10550 North Torrey Pines Road
La Jolla CA, 92037 USA
Office:  858-784-9764
Lab:  858-784-9243
Fax:  858-784-9779
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Administartive Assistant: Denise Munoz
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858-784-9964

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Kate Luby-Phelps
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 3:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: EMCCDs

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What's the current wisdom on EMCCDs for TIRF microscopy? We are currently
using a Hamamatsu 
Orca II ERG which performs remarkably well. However, we would like to
improve the sensitivity of 
detection without sacrificing too much spatial resolution or S/N.

Thanks,

Kate L-P