> btw why is he looking through the lens if the microscope is plugged into a monitor? Seems redundant... Actually, this is pretty common, especially if you are

> btw why is he looking through the lens if the microscope is plugged into a monitor? Seems redundant... Actually, this is pretty common, especially if you are doing fluorescence microscopy (complete derail from your main point, sorry): - The optics leading to the eye-piece is usually superior to the quality of the camera. You'll have a cleaner, crisper picture looking through the eyepiece - Most cameras tend to have a refresh rate which is laggy. - Eyepiece optics tend to have a wider field of view, making it a lot easier to find interesting areas to focus on - Especially for fluorescence, using the eyepiece helps block out background light, letting you focus on faint details. Some details are just really hard to make out on the computer screen, without fiddling with contrast/brightness settings - You may have the computer settings at a particular level where "browsing" the field is impossible. E.g. your "picture taking mode" is set to long exposures, or very quick exposures with high contrast. These settings make it difficult to actually use the computer for anything except taking the picture. - You are taking pictures in fluorescence, but selecting/focusing with bright-field.