I recently acquired a B&L Balplan biological microscope (about $200 on ebay) to look at really small critters and decided it would be nice to be able to record some of their antics. After a few measurements with a caliper and about 30 minutes with Sketchup, the design was ready to print on MegaMax. Initial test results, seen below, look pretty good! The camera is a Logitech Quickcam Pro for Notebooks (seriously, when are they just going to start using model numbers?) that can capture video at 960×720 and 15 fps. The camera is not a current product at Logitech but can be picked up for $10-20 on ebay. The still and video were captured using quvcview running on my laptop (ubuntu 13.04). Logitech’s software works great on Windows. The image below shows “horns” on the head of a pinhead sized bug that was crawling around in my work room. Magnification is 640X!
The adapter design and .stl files will appear on Thingiverse soon.
Since dead bugs don’t move the video is just the focus being swept:
http://vimeo.com/80511761