Dave Mitchell's DigitalMicrograph™ Scripting Website

Function

Provides a CCD acquisition control panel with two sets of acquisition conditions.

Version

version:20200430, v1.0

Author

D. R. G. Mitchell

Acknowledgements

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Comments

When acquiring TEM images and selected area diffraction patterns (SADPs), I typically use quite different acquisition conditions for the two types of data. I invariably use frame summing with SADPs to increase the dynamic range of the camera, in order to make weak reflections visible above the noise. I may also use 1x binning for such patterns to avoid saturating any intense spots. Acquisition times for SADPs (which do not drift) may also be much longer than images.

While binning and acquisition are readily accessible in the top level of the Gatan Camera Acquire control pane, frame summing is buried one level down in the preferences. This makes swapping acquisition conditions frequently tiresome. This script provides a control panel with two sets of acquisition conditions (exposure time, binning and frames to sum). It works completely independently of the Gatan settings, which also has an advantage in that sometime I forget to restore Frames to Sum to 1 and this can confuse the next user, because it is not visible at the top level of the control panel. Although designed ostensibly for bright field imaging and diffraction, the script does not change microscope modes or make any changes to the microscope. It just captures whatever is on the camera using the conditions specified. This means it can be used in any situation where two sets of camera acquisition conditions are useful.

System Requirements

Has been tested under GMS 2.32 and with an UltraScan camera. Should be compatible with GMS 3.x and all recent Gatan cameras.

Known Issues

This script uses a workaround to get past the Camera Timeout bug (feature?). If a live view image is running, the acquire function creates a timeout error if capturing anything other than 1x binned images. The solution is to capture the image from the camera at 1x binning and then rebin the image in software. Since software binning, rather than on-chip binning is used, this meansthat the acquisition it is a little slower than direct binned acquisition.

Supported

Yes

Included Files

Main script file.

Source Code