Celestron – 5MP CMOS Digital USB Microscope Imager – Digital Camera Captures Hi-Res Images and 30FPS Video – Perfect for Science Education and Classroom – Compatible with Mac OS and Windows

it's a good cam but the software disk it comes with is a nope. i ran this cam with the disk supplied software on one computer and dealt with the low quality images but then switched computers .. and the daggone thing wouldn't connect (a la many of the 1star reviewers). but then i downloaded the appropriate program from the celestron website and instoslammo, cam works and everything is a whole lot better than the program on the supplied disk. if you had the same connection issues and were about to return it, try going to celestron's site.

My intended use for this product is to photograph and video cyanobacteria and other aquatic life. The imager works with Windows and Macs, but Celestron does not have an Android app for it. It does NOT work with generic USB microscope apps such a MScopes. The software you need must be downloaded from Celestron and I recommend you follow their links from their "store" entry for this item to get the right version of manual and software. Also know that the camera image is a fraction of the eyepiece field of view. The software does have graphic tools including a scale, but I find the calibration tool for that scale to be quirky. Overall a nice product but it could use a bit of refinement for the software, and an app for Android tablets.

Requires installation of software on host computer. A software CD was not included in the box. The quick start guide included in the box says to download software from website. Software installation process requires user to enter the unique serial number of the imager; it's a no-go without this number. Instructions state that this S/N is printed on the envelope containing a software CD included in the box. But no CD was included in the box! This may be an excellent imager, but Celestron makes it very difficult for the purchaser and would-be user to actually install, set up and utilize it. Needlessly frustrating!

As some have mentioned, this camera is about 30X magnification where as most standard eyepieces that come with the microscope is 10X, so that may be an issue with some users of this camera, so plan accordingly if you buy this one. After downloading the software from Celestron, the camera is ready, it works well and the image quality is good. Your lowest power objectives will give you larger images than you might expect at first but I don't find that to be an issue. For the money, it is a very nice camera and it gives me a larger picture on my Laptop.

1. "The image is too zoomed in!" is because you selected a photo or video resolution of 1920x1080. This is not the native resolution of the camera and it zoom/crops it. Select the 960P resolution and suddenly you can see the same field of view as the oculars. It also significantly improves the picture quality. 2. The sensor maxes out at 1920x1080 (2mp) and is NOT a 5MP sensor. This is the actual resolution as detected by either Mac camera or Windows camera software. You only see the 2560 resolution offered in the Celestron software that comes with it because it is software upsampling the 2mp image. It's not real resolution. 3. the CCD is protected behind a glass IR filter on the end of the camera, but that glass IR filter is not protected by anything. You NEED an end cap when the camera is not in the microscope or you WILL scratch the lens and get dust. It does not come with one. I used a small black felt sack for this purpose. 4. There is absolutely NO manual control over the camera, gain, constrast, brightness, ISO, or shutter speed. The camera is in full auto all the time regardless of software and this can't be over written. You can adjust 'gamma, brightness, contrast' in the celestron software and your OS camera app, but it only adjusts how it appears on your screen, not the actual camera itself. This mean as you change the condenser Fstop, or the brighness of your illuminator, or you move the slide around from light to dark areas, the image is constantly hunting brighter and dimmer, and it often under exposes bright images so if you have a lot of white (like the area around your specimin) instead of white you get a dull grey, dark image. No way to counter act this that I've found. Other than these pit falls, it's basically plug and play with any microscope and you don't need any special drivers to use it. It's detected as a camera by mac or windows, and just works. The camera itself has a 20x magnification factor so if you're using 10x eyepieces, the camera image will be roughly twice as zoomed. With a 4x objective I can still see an entire plant stem cross section in one image, when using it at 960P resolution. At 1080p resolution it's so zoomed in it's almost unusable.

Works great as just another camera with the Microsoft Camera software. There was no need to download the Celestron software (which I have seen complaints about in the other reviews). The images are sharp and clear. Great value.

It has too much magnification for a compound biological microscope and way too much for my stereo viewing parts scope. It resolves to about a 30x eyepiece and reasonable size samples wont fit in the viewing frame. It would be great if a reduction lens could be fitted to make it a 10x eyepiece in addition to the 30x. Also the software must be restarted if the 5v usb power is removed then reapplied.

very disappointed with the very poor safter sales backup I ckearly supplied info on the problems and have never got a resolution from them It seems they couldnt even read my email because they gave responses that were totally irrelevent to the questions I asked. The problem is, not with the camera itself, but with the software which wouldnt install without causing an error. i finally gave up with the seller and threw the camera on the back shelf, probably never to be used :( :( very disappointed

Ottimo prodotto

Estos productos ayudaron mucho en el trabajo de laboratorio poniendo la cámara y poder tomar fotos de diferentes muestras.

Excelente

Great camera, useful for microscopy demonstrators, hobbyists and experimental biologists. I am running the software CELESTRON DIGITAL IMAGER HD 1.0 on a MAC OSX system (13.5.2) and the camera is put into the eyepiece of a DICA (Durga Instruments, Jalhandar Cantt) compound microscope. Still images are captured as Bmp, jpg and png, but video files appear not to be saved! I have written to CELESTRON, they’ve been prompt with responses but have failed to solve the problem so far. UPDATE finally bought a second hand PC with Win10 and it works! Still and video.