Lighting can drastically improve your images.

For some applications, the strong LED lights at the nose of your digital microscope can be too intense and cause uneven glare and hot spots.  So you can make a very drastic improvement in your images by turning off your LED lights and using more even and balanced diffuse light.  If your particular microscope doesn't have an "ON/OFF" light switch feature, you can block the light with a small cap with a hole in it fashioned out of plastic.  We recommend reducing intense LED light on some subjects that are highly-reflective like coins and jewelry.  Natural diffuse translucent lighting is the best so taking photos by a window can be helpful.

Professional photography studio light bulbs are the next best thing.


Soft daylight full spectrum  color light bulbs can be affordable and practical for capturing quality images.  A translucent light diffuser can be very effective at removing glare and hot spots from your images.  You can purchase expensive diffuser material or simply make one out of a milk jug.  White plastic is best if the light can get through it.

Backdrops: everyone uses white paper or sheets but you can place your target object on a clear or white piece of acrylic to allow light to enter the bottom of the target.  For example, if you have light coming up underneath a gemstone, you can see inside the gemstone a little more clearly.  You may want to use translucent diffuse light as well under your target.

Here is an example of photography using the strong LED lights vs. using more diffuse lighting as we demonstrated above:

The images above were cropped with Photoshop to compare them, but below are the "raw" unedited images.  This first image is the "before" cabochon:

This second image (below) is of the same cabochon but with the cab placed on a glass table, we also placed the polished stone on a white translucent piece of FedEx label paper, a kind of wax paper that FedEx labels are printed on and peeled off of when you print a label.  You can probably find a similar kind of translucent paper that will permit some light though it.   Not only does the wax paper make a nice translucent backdrop, but the small piece of paper is easy to slide around on the glass, to help center the stone under the microscope.  Below the glass table and wax paper, I'm holding an LED flashlight under the table and pressing it up against the glass so the cab is filled with light from below.  I move the flashlight around for a minute to find the perfect spot where the most light comes through the different light areas of the stone.  The mystical, dramatic light also creates a dramatic edge to the photo, like it's floating on a cloud or something.  After these adjustments, I custom fit a gallon jug diffuser (described above) to go around my target area.  Because the stone was kind of dark, I did place an extra lamp (the same lamp above) really close to the gallon jug.  The photo, below, needs even more light diffuser materials placed around the target area, but that's a work in progress for us and we're hunting for not only home made items around the house but more professional photo studio lighting.  But we think just using the sticker wax paper, glass, gallon jug and lamp really improved the photo.  Here is the "raw" unedited "after" photo...