AxioCam Digital Cameras from Carl Zeiss Provide High-quality Micrographs at a Low Price

Carl Zeiss is adding with two new models to its line of entry-level digital cameras for photo-micrography: the 1.4 megapixel AxioCam ICc1 and the 3.3 megapixel AxioCam ICc3. These cameras offer an excellent price/performance ratio and have been developed for users who work with laboratory and routine microscopes and simple stereomicroscopes.

The AxioCam ICc cameras with C-mount adapter are ideal for general micrographs of color objects when sufficient light is available, e.g. for all brightfield micrographs in materials microscopy. Due to their performance, these cameras provide an economical solution for routine industrial applications or simple documentation tasks in laboratories. They are fully integrated into the AxioVision software and capture fast, high- resolution live images (17 images per second with AxioCam ICc1 and 6 to 39 images per second with AxioCam ICc3) .

The addition of these budget-priced entry-level instruments to the AxioCam line makes system solutions from ZEISS available to more users. These new cameras have made it possible to replace economical video cameras and frame- grabber interface technology, and have led to a marked improvement in image quality.

Therefore, the complex installation of framegrabber cards is a thing of the past, and the resolution (from 1392 x 1040 pixels with the AxioCam ICc1 to 2028 x 1540 pixels with the AxioCam ICc3) of the digital cameras is no longer restricted to the video standard. Additionally, the AxioCam ICc has a wide variety of available exposure times; and some evaluation programs for research tasks including the analysis of object size and shape are ideally supplemented with these cameras. Both the reproducibility of measuring results and the operating convenience of these cameras are considerably higher than with inexpensive and therefore frequently used digital compact cameras with an integrated zoom lens.

With an edge length of approx. 4 cm, the cube-shaped cameras are extremely compact. They require neither an adapter nor an external power unit as power is supplied via the FireWire data cable.

Convenient system solutions are now available to the users with the ZEISS Primo Star and Axiostar microscopes, and the Stemi 2000C as well as SteREO Discovery stereomicroscopes.