Three New Additions to a Fully Interchangeable Digital Camera System

In response to the popularity of its cross-compatible digital camera systems, Nikon Instruments has today announced the addition of its DS-Fi1 digital camera head and DS-L2 and DS-U2 control units to its Digital Sight Series. The new camera head improves resolution, expands dynamic range and reduces noise, whilst the control units provide improved platforms for viewing, recording, measuring and processing images in clinical, industrial and research applications.

Thanks to the accelerated frame rate of the new DS-Fi1, positioning and focusing have become even easier, and, with its interline CCD solid-state image sensor providing a resolution of 5.0 million pixels, it produces high-quality brightfield, darkfield, phase contrast, DIC and fluorescence images. The Nikon DS-Fi1 also incorporates a newly designed IR filter on the camera head to improve red colour reproduction.

In order to assist with controlling the DS-Fi1 camera, Nikon has also introduced two new control units, giving the user a choice of a simple-to-use stand-alone system, or a hub controller for connection to a PC which facilitates more complex image analysis.

Live images can be comfortably captured, observed, recorded and utilised using the new stand-alone DS-L2 controller without being connected to a PC. The large built-in 8.4-inch LCD monitor can be split to display a still alongside a live image. This makes it ideal for applications requiring the user to compare and contrast a sample image with a live image. No computer is required to print images as the DS-L2 unit can be connected to a printer supporting the PictBridge standard.

Optimal image capture settings can be configured simply by selecting the observation method, such as brightfield or darkfield, and the type of sample. In the Biological Scene Mode there is even a mode optimized for HE and ELISA (enzyme antibodies) stained specimens for use with medical samples that require subtle colour reproduction.

With the new DS-U2 control every step from advanced image capture to image processing and analysis can be made through connection to a PC with NIS-Elements software, and the USB 2.0 device port enables the transfer of image files to a PC at twice the speed of the previous model.