Austin's Imaging Blog

Category: nikon elements

  • Acquisition Speed Comparison of MetaMorph, NIS Elements, Micro-Manager

    Acquisition Speed Comparison of MetaMorph, NIS Elements, Micro-Manager

    How fast can a typical imaging system really run? What factors affect this? While most research might not require rapid sequential capture, almost all experiments can benefiet from tight exposure/illumination timing, yet few microscope users are aware of timing delays injected into experiments by the control software they are using. So how much delay is…

  • Running HASP Licenses on Virtual machines

    One of the downsides to using OSX for my primary operating system is that most of the major imaging programs are windows-only. To compound the trouble, many of these programs, like NIS Elements, use the “HASP” license manager to communicate with a security key in order to fight piracy. So, you have to have this…

  • Updating Software? A pre-chaos checklist…

    A few years after your shiny new system is installed, you’ll inevitably look at it just like you look at a car. What was once running flawlessly now has a few bugs, some dust, is slower and generally worn in. So, at some point you’ll decide it’s time for an upgrade. This may consist of…

  • Lumencor Sola Driver for NIS Elements

    Yesterday we received our first shipment of Sola white light LED driven sources for microscopy. I had a chance to snag one and write a driver for it. Price is $300 USD. The driver controls both the shuttering and  ND on the box, and integrates easily into Elements as a shutter and ND filter wheel.…

  • PhotoFluor 2 Driver for Nikon Elements

    89 North has asked me to cook up a driver for the PhotoFluor 2, which I am now hosting under my Macros & Journals page, or you can use this link. This driver works in NIS Elements AR, and BR with Advanced Interpreter. Please contact me if you have any trouble using it! -Austin  

  • Lumencor Spectra Driver Available

    I’ve written a Lumencor Spectra Driver that works with NIS Elements B3.2+. (AR or BR + Advanced Interpreter) The driver provides integrated control into elements for both intensity of lines and channel. These appear as a shutter and two filter wheels, offering full integration into Elements’ Optical configurations. We are selling it for $750, including…

  • Acquisition crashes, and power settings in Win7

    Windows 7 has a new power management interface, and the design of modern motherboards, along with win7 Automatic Power Management (APM), can cause some insidious device-based software crashes if power options aren’t set correctly. Here’s how to make sure your system is running in the best mode. Open the Windows Control panel Search for and…

  • Back up your NIS Elements settings! (V3.1+)

    (Updated 5/6) – One of my colleagues (Thanks Aaron) noted that the exporter/importer only works on v3.1 and higher. So in the past week I’ve had two systems that mysteriously lost all device settings from elements. I am suspecting this is due to a waindos security update somehow, but until this is confirmed the simple,…

  • Nikon C2 – NIS Elements and Spectral Capability

      Nikon has redesigned and updates it’s classic C1 Confocal. The C1 was a great core facility confocal as it was a stable and reliable product. The one thing that held it back was the lack of access to NIS Elements software. With the release of the C2 this problem has been solved. So, along…

  • Proper RGB Conversion of Multichannel Images

    When acquiring images in NIS Elements, it is possible to acquire each image with a color over that is approximate to the wavelength used for acquisition. This is the easiest way to view and relate multi-channel data, but when converting the images for export to other programs, it cam become a problem. In the image…