My Toys

Microscopes
My binocular compound microscope is an ample scientific Nexcope CM701.  This microscope is not available in the US market. I got this microscope from a very good friend of mine.  He is the importer for this microscope and while I was interested in getting one.  He is offering me this microscope since he is not selling them.  The optical specification is not spectacular, achromatic objective lens, but very good optical quality (other the very edge of the field of view) and mechanically sound and smooth.  I mainly use this microscope for pond life, rock thin section slide or plant section slides.
My stereo microscope is an ample scientific SM-Plus stereo microscope with 2X/4X objective and 10X ocular. I use it when I don’t need a lot of magnification, such as looking at insects, plant leaves surface or rocks.  The microscope come with both top (reflected light) and lower light (transmitted light).
Cameras

Tucsen CMOS 3.0 PM microscope camera.  The Tucsen microscope camera kits come with a c-mount microscope camera, c-mount camera adaptor (I attach it to the camera and drop it into the eyepiece socket of my binocular microscope.  An additional 30.5 mm adapter ring is needed for my stereo microscope.), micrometer and a software CD for image/video capturing.  I use the camera for general purpose photomicrography.  It does an excellent job for the most application except high reflected surface or high contrast images.  The advantage (compared with the canon EOS) is the convenience and on-screen (WYSIWYG) viewing – although canon can do live preview too when connected to a PC with USB but the preview screen does not show the exact exposure of the image taken.)

Canon EOS T1i is another equipment that I use for photomicrography.  I removed the 18-55 mm lens that comes with the camera and replaced it with a microscope adapter purchased from amazon.  Drop in the adapter into the eyepiece socket of the microscope, very much like the Tucsen.  The advantage of canon are better sensor quality, white balance handling (The white balance is based on the spectrum of the light rather then the pixel colors of the image) and cordless picture taking.  Most of the time, I would use Tuscen for the convenience and WYSIWYG preview.  For the following scenarios that I would go for Canon: don’t want to turn the computer on, need to take long videos, high contrast/reflected specimen.
I typically use two modes for Canon EOS photo taking (manual mode and video mode):

Manual mode

Video mode

I can see images the viewfinder when capturing the photos using the manual mode.  I can preview the image from the LCD on the back of the camera when using the video mode.