Examining a CMOS Sensor with a Microscope

The Landingfield: Dedicated to Astrophotography has published a very detailed and interesting post on using a microscope at various magnifications to examine different parts of the CMOS sensor taken from a Nikon D2H digital camera.

From The Landingfield:

"Macro-photography are done at 1x ~ 2x magnification. Microscope on the other hand could easily deliver a 40x magnification without eyepiece. In this post, we are peeping into the basic element that captures the image in digital photograph – a pixel on CMOS sensor. I had obtained a Nikon JFET LBCAST sensor from a broken D2H imaging board. LBCAST is still based on CMOS fabrication technology and it’s an Active Pixel Sensor.

Photographing an opaque sample compared to biological slice is extremely difficult, since ordinary trans-illumination will not work. An epi-illumination, de facto illuminating through the objective, should be used instead. Basically a half mirror is in place of the optical path to direct light towards the objective, then back in to the eyepiece and camera. Epi-fluorescence will use a dichroic mirror and a pair of filters."

Read the orginal fully illustrated post here.