Re: [ccp4bb]: digital imaging of crystals

[Edward Berry <eaberry@lbl.gov>]

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"david lawson (JIC)" wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I know this is not strictly CCP4 but.......
> 
> I would like to purchase a system to record images of crystals
> electronically. If anyone has come up with a relatively cheap method of
> doing this, I would be grateful if they could share their experiences. I
> guess the cheapest way is to stick a digital camera on your microscope - we
> already have the adaptor for a regular SLR camera. However, I would also
> like to hear about other, perhaps more sophisticated solutions.
>
If you're tending toward the high end, I suggest looking into a robotic 
microscope stage and crystal tray manipulator so you can give it a 
stack of 12 trays and have it take a picture of each well at 0, 1, 6,
12, 24 hr, and daily thereafter; without the necessity of some human coming 
into the cold room and breathing moist air all over the lenses. Then 
if you solve the structure from the coffin-shaped crystal in well C5
of tray 7, you can go back and make a time-lapse movie of the growth of 
that crystal to show in you powerpoint presentation.   

And get Emerald or Hampton to mass-produce the system and sell it for
under $10k so we can all get one.

On the low end you can get adapters to put an inexpensive ccd video camera 
on the same port used by the film camera, and something like Connectix
"Quick clip" device to grab video or still images from the video stream.
Resolution is lousy, but if you zoom in till the crystal fills the view
its not that bad.  Pixera has a digital video system with the same 
functionality but refresh rate is much slower than video making it 
difficult to focus (at least on slow PC's).

Ed