If you are already using a Princeton monochrome camera, then you have one of
the most important components for high quality true color imaging. The other
two components needed are  a color selector and software to merge three
monochrome images into a true color one.

The Spot camera by Diagnostic instruments puts these pieces elegantly into a
single housing. By selecting the desired wavelength using a liquid crystal
tunable filter, it then takes three monochrome images sequentially, one red,
one green, and one blue.

For wavelength selection with your Princeton camera, you have at least three
options:
1) Use a liquid crystal filter assembly from Cambridge Research in
Massachusetts. http://www.cri-inc.com/Pages/framesets/product_VS_rgb.html
2) Use the filter holders built into your microscope stand. Put red, green
and blue filters into the holders and manually select which image to
acquire. This is cumbersome.
3) Use a computerized filter wheel mounted: a) in front of the illuminator
or b) in front of the camera. Either will work well.

Depending on your budget and your current software capabilities, these
options all allow you to achieve some of the finest true color images
achievable digitally. As noted, Leaf makes an excellent, high resolution
camera, but its slow speed must be taken into consideration.

-Ted Inoue

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Richard
Hotchkiss
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 1998 1:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: color digital camera


We are in the market for a color digital camera for our microscope.
Currently we have a Princeton instruments camera which is a great grey
scale camera but does not do real color. We are interested in getting a
camera which will provide photo quality digital images which will replace
our 35mm camera images ( on Kodak Royal Gold film). We have a lot of
hematoxylin and eosin stained slides which we want to get great true
color images of directly onto our computer.
We tried a camera from "Spot Diagnostics"-I think this is the correct
name. It was really good and we are quite interested in purchasing it.
There was one other camera which another lab bought which was not
acceptable in all cases--I believe the name was Pixera.
Does any one have experience with these instruments or similar ones?
Also, is there something new on the horizon? I heard about a CMOS image
sensor which is about to come out and it has a number of advantages over
existing hardware.
thanks
Richard Hotchkiss
Washington University School of Medicine