Celestron 5 MP Handheld Digital Microscope Pro

Celestron

Celestron 5 MP Handheld Digital Microscope Pro

Regular price: €273,00
Sale price: €273,00
Regular price: ~~€450,00~~
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Description

True 5MP sensor to capture and save high resolution images and videos of your specimens
5 Element IR cut high quality glass lens ensures sharper images. Shutter Speed 1 second to 1/1000 second
20x to 200x powers, great for low power observation of 3D specimens (Note: Final magnification determined by monitor size)
4 foot USB 2.0 cable for easy maneuverability when viewing large surfaces
Intuitive software with measuring features
Windows and Mac compatible
SOFTWARE and FIRMWARE:
MicroCapturePro (Model B), Windows 7 (update 2.4.1) MicroCapturePro (Model B), MAC OS (update 2.4.1) MicroCapture Pro, Windows (update 2.3) MicoCapturePro (Model B), Windows 8/Windows 10 (update 2.4.1) MicroCapturePro , MAC OS (update 2.3)

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Customer Reviews

Buy a macro lens instead I had high hopes for this microscope: Celestron has always meant quality to me. But it fell far short of my expectations. Three failures ruined the microscope in my eyes.First is the extreme difficulty of getting a good focus. It has a very thin depth of field, which in itself is not objectionable; at these magnifications, it's very difficult to get much depth of field. But such a depth of field demands an extremely stable focussing mechanism, which this microscope lacks. Its plastic mechanism simply doesn't have the stability required for the job. I fiddled and fiddled, but the mechanism always shifted slightly after I removed my hand.Second is the ghastly software. I used it on a Mac, and perhaps the Mac software is much inferior to the Windows software. The user interface is absolutely atrocious. For example, after taking a photograph, a thumbnail of your shot appears on a column on the right. You cannot, however, drag and drop that thumbnail onto the desktop. This by itself is such an egregious mistake as to render the software design unacceptable, but it gets even worse. If you want to move the image onto the desktop, you must first double-click on the thumbnail, which raises the image in a new window. But if you attempt to drag and drop the image from there, you only succeed in drawing a measuring line onto the image. Worse, you cannot UNDO the measuring line. At this point, you must close the window. But you cannot use CMD-W (which has been the standard for 33 years); you must instead click on the red close circle in the upper left corner of the window.This is just a taste of the idiocy of the software design; more horrors become apparent on deeper inspection.Next we come to another design blunder: the heavy compression of the image. Now, Celestron definitely had a tricky decision to make. The microscope connects to the computer through a USB port. Now, USB is simply too slow to permit much video. Celestron could have opted for a faster port, such as HDMI or Thunderbolt, but many Windows machines lack these ports, so they decided to stick with the USB port and compress the image so much that they could get real-time video down that wire. This of course requires heavy compression, which in turn degrades the quality of the image. This was unavoidable with video -- but why did they have to apply the same compression to still images? The correct solution was to equip the microscope with enough intelligence to use less compression for a still photograph.The net result is a lousy image. I attach two photos of the same image: a printed ampersand. The first was taken with the Celestron microscope. The second was taken with my iPhone using a $20 macro lens. I have cropped the iPhone image, but otherwise it is unchanged. As you can see, the iPhone image is superior.The quality promised by the 5MP sensor on this microscope is thrown away by the strong compression used in the software. A 2MP sensor with less compression would perform just as well. 2Fun, as advertised, fine price, would give it as a gift. I had hoped this would be strong enough that, not only could I see things better, but that I would be able to see things that I would not even have discovered with naked eye. My main concern was that this might be little more than a macro-only point-and-shoot camera. But it is definitely far higher magnification. For example, I was able to use it to read the super-tiny serial number on the side of my wife's engagement ring diamond. (I believe any mainstream diamond these days that is certified or appraised has such a laser-engraved serial number, not sure).I took the same photo of a #20 hypodermic needle with both high and low resolutions. Interesting that after careful visual inspection I concluded the -lowest- resolution had slightly better clarity than the highest. Go figure.What I really, really miss is polarization to thwart glare and enhanced depth of field. For example, when imaging the side of a pencil, only about 1/6th of the depth of the pencil is in focus at any time, while the entire depth of the letters of In God We Trust on a quarter was in focus. I am very anxious to putz with this outside next spring with translucent leaves, insects, etc. But polarization and enhanced field depth apparently cost several hundred dollars more, still. 4Good 5MP Consumer Digital Microscope (Macro Imager) with a Few things to be Aware of This 'USB Microscope' isn't going to be everything to everybody. I primarily use this product to inspect Trichomes on plants and it works very well for this. For me, it's a big upgrade over a hand held Jewelers Loupe. It's not something that's going to be capable of the level of detail that a true microscope is capable of. The 'depth of field' when viewing 3 dimensional objects isn't very wide and you end up refocusing often to bring out details in separate areas of the viewing frame. My older 2MP 'Scope' and Jewlers Loupe behave the same way in this respect.The hardware is nice quality for a Consumer grade 'USB microscope' (technically a 'USB Macro Imager'). It doesn't appear that it's going to fall apart or break. The adjustment gears on the height are tight and smooth, the focus wheel is also tight and the feel is good. I've read some reviews where some people don't like the tight feel of the adjustments, so it's a matter of preference to be aware of. I use these 'USB microscopes' with the stand (not handheld) and the Celestron is far superior to my no-name $20 2MP USB microscope in this regard. The base is more sturdy and heavy then I thought it would be. What I do not like about the stand is that it does flex at the point where the vertical tube meets the base. This creates some minor frustration when focusing because it causes the camera to move. The USB cord is 4 feet long and there's a nice adjustable angle USB cable guide on the back of the stand. While I don't use them, the clips for holding glass slides appear to be well made and well fastened to the base. The clips rotate out of the way and don't generally interfere with observations unless I have something like a large plate sitting on the base. My main issues and concerns are with the Celestron software. Most noticeable about the Celestron software on a mid-2011 Mac with 8GB memory and Mac OS High Sierra is that it crashes on the 1st launch and must be launched a 2nd time before it runs. It's responsive and quick to focus, but CPU usage is very high. In addition, I've noticed that any software that I run with this camera doesn't display an image until I launch, close, and relaunch the app. After a 2nd launch, apps display images/video. JPG file output is high quality to my DVI monitor and the typical Celestron MicroCapture Pro saved image size is at 2592x1944 resolution. The software does feel a bit dated and could use a GUI update that is a bit more modern. Apple Photo Booth does not work with this camera, however, Quick-Camera (free on the Apple App Store) works great. It supports image mirroring and rotation, but not photo capture (use the Mac OS screen capture command instead). A full size screen capture resolution with Quick-Camera test gave me a 1438x1024 image. Not as high as Celestron's but still very respectable. Sharing live photo images via Facetime is an important use for me, so I'm glad that Facetime works with this camera. The image is horizontally reversed in Facetime, but I can live with that. The Celestion MicroCapture Pro software crashed a couple of times, but did ultimately run when I connected my Mac via Apple AirPlay to my 2nd Gen Apple TV (connected to a 48" 4K UHD TV). See the last photo for a smart phone picture (handwriting with ink pen on paper) of this setup with the Celestron software running over AirPlay in full screen mode. Unfortunately, the picture as seen on this review doesn't really do justice at all to this setup as I can literally see detail in the ink that is not viewable in the Amazon posted photo. Typically I use a 24 inch DVI monitor, and in general, a decent HDMI or DVI display is going to give the best viewing experience that I have found.I have an older dual processor Pentium laptop running Windows 10 at 1024x768 resolution. The software loads fine, but don't bother on older hardware as responsiveness on focusing lags badly to the point of being practically unusable. Finally, on both the Mac and the Windows systems - CPU usage with the Celestron software is way too high as I can hear both system's fans kicking in on high after loading the software. See the photos for a screenshot of the Celestron software pegging my CPU at well over 100%. Celestron needs to make a serious effort to improve the software experience of this product.I use the camera on my Mac so I downloaded the Microcapture Pro software off of Celestron's confusing support webpage There's a Mac and a Mac 'Model B' version. I assume this naming convention must have something to do with the model number of the microscope, as it means nothing in Apple speak. However, I was unable to determine if I had a 'B' version microscope looking at the Box, DVD, manual, microscope, etc. Ultimately I downloaded the 'B' version (2.4.1) and it installed and ran.The bottom line is that I recommend this product provided that you have done some research to verify it's going to give you a decent amount of magnification of your viewing purpose, don't mind tinkering with a modification or two, and a fast computer that supports DVI or HDMI output to a larger size monitor. I'm not sure that I am comfortable calling this a plug and play - no frills device. It's a geek thing for sure... This is not a real microscope but a pretty nice macro imager and I am satisfied with the purchase. I paid just over $60 for what I thought was going to be a open box item with damaged packaging and a cosmetic flaw on the front of the microscope available from the Amazon warehouse (see Available from these Sellers or 'Used and New') on the Amazon item description Web page). What I received was a brand new sealed box item with no cosmetic flaws that had a Amazon Warehouse sticker stuck on the box. I can't guarantee that your purchasing experience will be the same as mine but in my opinion this product was definitely worth the price that I paid. Just be aware that it's nice hardware hampered by low quality software. Celestron could do us all a favor by releasing a open source licensed or similar software version of their 'MicroCapture Pro' software.Where these type of consumer based Macro Imaging camera devices are concerned, 5MP seems to be about the state of the art for some reason and there's only a couple of options at that level. It's really not very advanced. For example, the Raspberry Pi Foundation sells a quality basic general purpose 8MP camera these days for around $25. Most typical product offerings in this 'USB Microscope' category have a maximum of 2MP. As I've seen stated elsewhere in discussions - it may be viable and least expensive to just get a Macro Lens that connects directly to a 12MP smart phone provided that you don't mind a handheld option or even rigging up a smart phone/macro lens/tripod/remote bluetooth shutter setup (that's a mouthful). I'll have to try this out and report on it. In the meanwhile, I've ordered a $20 Aluminum Alloy Base/Stand that I am going to test this camera with next. If the new stand option isn't any better with this camera then I have no doubt that I can get use of it with my older 2MP camera. I'll update this post with my results of the new stand test in a couple of weeks after I've had some time to use it in this configuration. Unfortunately it cannot fix the software issues however, Celestron has to step up to the plate for that to happen. The software would not be such an issue, but --- This is a digital device and you need software to use it as there is no way to view images otherwise.Update: I did receive the Koolertron base/stand and it's a keeper with this camera. The camera fits the stand and It while there is still some slight flex in regards to camera movement while focusing, it's much easier to focus now. The stand is sturdy and there is a small amount of play in the controls, but it's no big deal. A bonus benefit for me is that it has a significantly smaller footprint then the Celestron stand so the setup takes up less space on my desktop. 4This was a huge disappointment. The brightness adjustment has no effect -- these ... This was a huge disappointment. The brightness adjustment has no effect -- these is no light. Ambient light is too bright -- images are all posterized. The focus adjustment is very stiff and difficult to use. The captured images, even at the lowest resolution have vertical lines obscuring the subject. Overall a very poor piece of equipment. See attached captured image and screen capture of the software display of the image. 1Overall Great Fun! and Good Value. Very good for the home hobbyist to look at coins, stamps, plants, bugs, and such! Have even used for work in rudimentary root cause analysis of oil patch swatches and metallurgy samples, but do not expect commercial/industrial grade results obviously. Overall very fun with the children/grandchildren to explore the macro world and your coin/stamp collections! Check out the awesome choppers of a centipede, detail of your coins, or video a bee regurgitating nectar! Performs just as manufacture states, set up is easy and software install with no problems. Windows 8 no problem. Take the time to download and read the manual to get full benefit. Handheld or portable stand results are fine. Good image/video capture and basic edit features for the home hobbyist or can do more detail edits in your other photo software if you want/need. Very nice to have the light control and image capture control on the USB cable. Debunking some of the negative reviews...Yes it reflects onboard light source on coin slabs, highly reflective objects, duh, but simply turn the onboard light source down and increase external ambient light source. Yes, you need to calibrate measurement each time want to measure at different focal object length but that is SOP in industry to get accurate result and after all this is not for the rocket scientist, calibration is quick and easy and for the home hobbyist how important is that degree of precision accuracy, really?, oh please! Also just clip the calibration ruler to the base when storing for safe keeping. I cover mine with a zip lick baggie to keep unit clean and dust free. Construction is fine for the price range and unit is quite stable, but we live in a plastic construction world, and would not knock it down for that, all the plastic components work fine and with ease, a tad overpriced to me thus the four star rate but I imagine most the cost is in the optics which are quite good considering the price. Amazon price is worthy but would not pay manufactures list price. Amazon service is exceptional as always Overall would say its a good value and having lots of fun for hobbyist and entertainment needs!! Would recommend to friends. 4Celestron Handheld 5MP USB Microscope I purchased this 'scope hoping to have better luck than with one of the no-names (read Veho). Having had some experience with these USB scopes, I probably was able to better sort out the rash of complaints listed in the latest dozen or so reviews.Some of the comments about "Blobs" or reflections or artifacts are actually typical of bits of dust. A Swiffer duster will clean much of this up in seconds.I do knife sharpening as a retirement hobby, and I use the scope for checking for scratches, chips, nicks and level of polish.Understand that these are not true microscopes, but are high-magnification video cameras. Imaging is processed from the video stream, not like a photograph. Modern digital cameras do the opposite.My prior 'scope has a similar thumbwheel adjustment built into the housing, which varied the magnification. The Celestron doesn't have variable magnification; it's fixed and is adjustable in the software, which simply crops the image. The resolution is based on the full image, so if you zoom in, it's like using digital zoom on your little Nikon Coolpix camera. The Celestron thunbwheel adusts the actual projection of the camera lens axially with the housing as a fine-adjust tool to focus.Hoping that a 5MP camera would be better than my 2MP camera, I was disappointed to realize that setting up for the higher resolution didn't improve the image on my screen. Silly me, I would need a hi-res screen. But capturing images at the higher res resulted in blurry images. Disclaimer here: I use the camera primarily in the handheld mode. If I had a good image on the screen (the basic 2MP is actually better than HD video) and captured an image, apparently the software uses interlacing to fill in the other 3MP. Meaning that it actually has to take more than one frame of video to produce a higher resolution image. In handheld mode, that means a blurry image. I haven't yet tested for true 5MP imaging with a fixed mount.All that said, this camera has some major improvements over the no-name I have been using. With its fixed magnification and adjustable focus I was able to set up for my particular use. I adjust the focus point to fall on the plane of the face of the clear plastic shroud. Then I can touch the camera to any reasonably straight component and immediately have a near-perfect focus. I can tip the camera to lay the shroud flat and centered on a knife edge and slide the camera along the edge, watching the video of the edge as I pan along the edge. Nice! I can even take videos, but the file size is huge!The no-name (Veho) image capture button is on the housing, making it nearly impossible to get a clear image without disturbing the camera. I had to use the "print screen" key and then paste the image to some other software. A very time-consuming process. I use Corel's version of Photoshop.Unlike the others, Celestron provides a cable-mounted capture button, the housing of which also holds a thumbwheel dial for the LED brightness. No disturbing the camera! Very nice!The fixed magnification image shown on my screen is comparable to my Veho's max magnification of about 185X (not the advertised 800X). I don't need more power so much as a clearer image of my knife edges.Also nice is the calibration method provided. This makes it easy to measure objects on the screen. I was able to measure "scratch lines" down to within few microns. I did find a glich in that the dimension of a measurement is unreadable because of the font size when you are zoomed in.The software could use some other improvement, but is vastly better than the no-name. The instructions are supplied as a .pdf file which was only a dozen or so pages. Some sections could use clarification and a forthright explanation of the video and image capture would be helpful. It would also be nice if I could change the color and font of the measuring tools. Under certain lighting conditions, it simply disappeared.BTW, I was able to also run my old camera on the Celestron software, You have to restart the software after you plug in a different camera. I haven't played with it yet to test the hybrid performance. Maybe I'll find situations that would dictate one camera over the other. 12/2015 edit: The non-Celestron cameras seem to work with the software, but you can't capture images12/2015: An update after a couple of years of use:Celestron says it's a fixed magnification, but actually I've found that these cameras (the tubular kind) have a single lens which is moved closer or farther from the 5MP sensor to focus. The closer the lens is to the object, the greater the effective magnification. I use it at a fixed focal plane - the face of the shroud, which I rest on the knife edge. I've found that all these cameras have two positions at which they will focus on a given plane. For me, on my 21" monitor, this is 50X and about 160X. I've learned that for my use (knife edges) 50X is perfect. Some depth-of-field, easy focus. On further study, I don't think the rez is boosted by interlacing. I think it really is 5MP, but yes, 2MP is all you need for any HD monitor. To use 5MP, you need to save to a JPEG and zoom in to the level you want. Frankly 5MP isn't much better than 2MP. 4I think Celestron needs to provide drivers for their hardware compatible with this decades operating systems. I would give this a higher rating because I really wanted it but failed to understand when I read XP,Vista and Windows 7 compatible that is exactly what it meant! Now here is my gripe, at least for 2 years or more those of us who do not have an Apple laptop or computer have one that runs on a microsoft OS. It is well known that since Microsoft offered the free introductory Win 10, many of us switched to microsoft 10.We assume, of course, it's microsoft 10 and therefore plug and play if it worked with win 7 64 ,it certainly should have drivers compatible with win10 64.It doesn't. I always thought that a decice ,peripheal with it's own software would include any necessary drivers. Of course that's not true. I went to the Celestron web side and looked for firmware updates and forst it was confusing to me which one went with this device becuse their firmware update has another name or at least a confusing one.The after downloading it, erasingnthe previous installation several times, I went back to the Celestron site for support, what I got was Microsoft was responsible for providing the proper drivers for their decice.And here you go, when I installed I saw A POS barcode scanner pop up. 3Overall, satisfied Received my microscope yesterday. Hooked it up and focused on the calibration gauge.Pros: Worked right off the bat. I'm using an old Windows XP laptop. The computer found the hardware without any issues. Installed the software (included disk), ran it and saw the images. Fiddled with focusing a bit, but found the gauge easily.Cons: See attached pictures. With ambient light, the picture has a brown cast to it. It's visible, but if you are interested in actual color pictures, this will not be sufficient. Second picture is with the built-in LED light. As you can see, the individual LEDs can be seen. Third picture is with the LEDs turn off, and an auxiliary side light shining on the gauge. This looks like the best way to use this microscope. Not sure what the shadows are in the third picture with the side light. I think it might be due to the clear plastic housing on the bottom of the scope. Unfortunately, there is no way to remove it.Another Con is that the software has an annoying feature that automatically adjusts the brightness. Adding more light or changing the brightness of the LEDs doesn't make the picture any brighter. The software adjusts to what it thinks is the best brightness. I looked at the limited menu items, and there is no way to defeat or adjust that feature.I gave it 4 stars because with a side light, it will do what I want, and that is take some reference pictures to post on the internet. It's a lot more convenient than with my old stereo microscope with a camera attached to one eyepiece. 4My 10 year old 1.3 mp off brand was better! junk!!! Maybe I got a defective unit, but I doubt it due to its typical cheap Chinese construction. I followed the instructions and set it up on a Win 10 computer.. the image was off color and grainy. I cycled through the resolutions, trying each in turn... no difference in image quality. I then set it up on a Win 7 computer, I test software for a living and need various machines... I had the same results with both machines, and testing each resolution setting, the results were the same, grainy images and washed out color under several lighting conditions. I tried the unit lighting at variable brightness, I used external light sources.... nothing made any real difference. I wish I would have saved at least one image to post here... but I was fed up after spending a day off from work... working!Maybe others will have better luck with it than I did. 1Nice gadget for home and classroom I have been using this product for roughly two months both in the classroom and at home and have found several great uses for it. Firstly, it has served its function as a microscope quite well, allowing me to capture very fine details to share with my students. Secondly, by outfitting a taller ring stand with a clamp, I can easily demonstrate dissection techniques to my classes without the need for a crowd of students around the dissection tray. Lastly, I got creative and proceeded to use the microscope as a sort of document camera (as I did not have one in my class at the time). Not exactly the ideal usage, but works well in this scenario regardless.I'm not sure why other users have had issues with the software, but I have used the product on my Windows 7 desktop and laptop with no issues whatsoever. The only thing I may have done differently was to go directly to Celestron's website to download the newest software. Calibration was quick and easy. I just took some pictures using the calibration tool (AKA a ruler) and had the microscope set in the matter of a minute.Overall, a great tool that has made my classroom that much better.Edit 10/3/2014: After having used this for a period of time, I have some changes to my initial feedback:1. Calibration, while quick and easy the first time around, quickly becomes a pain when you have to calibrate every. single. time.2. For minute details, a low quality optical microscope would be better, simply by virtue of being able to control lighting conditions as opposed to super-bright LEDs (even if they can be adjusted).3. Software support for Mac is mediocre at best. 3

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Celestron 5 MP Handheld Digital Microscope Pro

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Celestron 5 MP Handheld Digital Microscope Pro

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Celestron 5 MP Handheld Digital Microscope Pro

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Celestron 5 MP Handheld Digital Microscope Pro

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