The Wild M420 is a high resolution automatic macro photography system with zoom apochromatic optics. It can be used with a 35mm camera, a video camera or a digital camera, though it is nearly always used with the latter. The basic unit has a magnification range of 5.8x to 35x. The corresponding fields of view for the 35mm camera are as big as 10 mm by 15 mm and as small as 1.7 mm by 2.3 mm. The basic range of the instrument can be multiplied by .5x or by 2x by the addition of mutar lenses. The following gives a step by step run down on its use with the SPOT digital camera.

1. Mount your specimen on the stage as is appropriate for the type of material you are photographing. There are three base inserts for the macroscope. There is a plain plate (with a white and a black side), a mirror transilluminator insert with transparent plate and a tipping stage. Plasticine, pins and small dishes are common ways of holding specimens. Wet materials should be fully immersed under an appropriate liquid before photographing them in order to reduce specular reflection.
Some live material may need to be packed in ice. Make sure that a scale is included in the field of view if necessary. It can be cropped out of the final photograph if not needed. An alternative is to photograph a stage micrometer at the same magnification as your image for later calibration of measurement software.

2. You may only need incident illumination (from above) or you may need brightfield or darkfield transillumination (from below). Any of these can be achieved with small spotlamps or with the Volpi Intralux 6000 fiber optic illuminator. These should all be used on low intensity for everything except photography of motile materials as the bulb life is greatly diminished on high intensity. Brightfield and darkfield transillumination is done by shining light into the mirror base. In addition to the double arm fiber light source which work as two adjustable spot lamps, the Volpi can also accept a ring illuminator that mounts around the M420's lens. This gives very flat, even, shadowless lighting that works well with some material and is very easy to use. Make sure that the illumination you choose is right for your material and that it emphasizes the features you want. Expect to spend more time getting the illumination perfect than on anything else.

3. Next, turn on the SPOT RT KE camera and launch the SPOT software by clicking its desktop icon. If you don't turn on the camera first you will get an error message when you launch the SPOT software.

4. Under Setup/Image Setup you will find a dialogue box which allows you to choose between full colour RGB (24 bit) or black & white (8 bit). It also allows changes to be made to a number of other camera parameters, but please don't fiddle with them or you may cause great grief for other users.

5. Next, hit the Live button on the top left of the screen and from the Live Image window hit the Controls . . . button to launch the live image control panel which will look like this:

6. Focus your specimen and set the M420's zoom for the magnification you want. Then adjust the Exposure Brightness slider till you have a well exposed image and adjust the Gamma till the contrast looks good with full detail in both the highlight and the shadow areas of your image. Checking the Fit to Window box will force the whole image into the window so you can make sure what you need is included in the field of view. Unchecking it allows you to see part of the image at real size which makes focusing easier. If you don't need the whole field of view, check Selection rather than Full Chip and draw a box that includes only what you need.

7. Briefly replace your prep with a white card and press the rainbow button (forth from left) on the toolbar to automatically set the white balance for your lighting. Then press Snap to record the image. After every four or five images take a moment to save your pictures, either as TIFF files if you will be doing measurements or analysis or otherwise as JPEG files. Your images can then be adjusted or made into plates using Adobe PhotoShop. The files can be sent via File Transfer Protocol or FTP to your own computer later if they are saved in the C:/Download directory.