FAKE Sony IMX290 microscope camera - SCAM 

They scam also in my case. After almost 10 months I opened mine and there is IMX307 with autofocus instead of IMX290with autofocus. Same shop: Eakins Microscope Store.

I would even say that 99% of the cameras that have been available for a while are equipped with fake chips. For new models, the chance of getting a camera with an original chip in China is greater. But as soon as the model does well, the expensive original chips are replaced by cheap copies. And by the way, this does not only apply to cameras! And even if some people here write that this is a light problem, this is not true. Quite apart from the fact that you want the product you paid for. But you can see very well on the video that there is a problem with the dynamic range of the sensor. And you can't compensate or change that with light. The dynamic range remains poor. And that's what makes the difference between the sensors.

I would like to order a microscope camera but after watching the video and reading the comments I’m not sure which store or sensor to choose :/ any advice? Thank you!

hi. thanks for the video. is there a legit listing with the right imx290 sensor, WITHOUT autofocus? have you found out?

Hello, could you send me a link with the procedure of connecting the ft232h interface to your camera board, please? Thanks.

Hi! Request. Show more details of the contacts to which you connected and what voltage was the converter 5V, 3.3V or 1.8V? What lens enlargement do you recommend to work with chips in the SOP8 and SSOP8 (0, 625mm per pin) package? 180X will be the best choice? Best Regards.

Have you try using dual led gooseneck for removing the reflection

I bought a 4K usb C camera from Eakins only a week ago. It advertised to have a high end Sony Sensor. I have it on 180X lens with 0.5x Barlow, monocular, not binocular or trinocular. The image is quite crisp and the zoom can go really in there with a bit manual focus. With golden pins like a hard drive connector there can be reflection but tuning down the led ring strength helps a lot

which site did you order from Eakins store? or Eakins microscope store i believe they are not the same company?

I bought an eakins 4k panasonic sensor microscope and canceled the product before shipping, how do you think andonstar brand?

Your video quality are really better than before! Good work dude

to eliminate reflections, please use the gooseneck lamp. that overhead lamp is no good for some cases, reflections everywhere, including that switch board.

Is there another way to see the true sensor ? I have bought one camera too in that store.... How I know on my camera where are these 3 pins? Gnd tx an RX ? Thanks...

If you want to avoid reflection you need to change the angle of the light. If you ring light is aiming straight down reflection will come straight back at the camera if you have light coming in at a 45 degree angle the reflection will reflect back at 45 degrees

Did You find real one ? Or let me ask, this 400€ was a correct price for this sensor or, as You said You should buy one at 1000€ price range and 400€ was scam becouse You wanted to pay too low. Im also looking for nice microscope to look at my meteorite slices, but have no idea what to buy yet. But sure something like 400-500€ not 100€

Thank You very much for this video.

Found at eakins store at aliexpress similar camera with IMX307 sensor like they claim, would it be a fake as well??

what's the status on this? it seems there haven't been any useful updates. A lot of the commenters below never come back & provide useful feedback on their findings after buying a scope from a certain vendor. I'm in the market for an autofocus hdmi scope in this range, but I'm somewhat hesitative at this point after seeing all of these complaints of shady dealers on aliexpress, yet I also refuse to pay the ridiculous mark-up from aftermarket vendors selling the same scopes at greatly inflated prices (amscope, nridge fix, etc.)

Just opened up my LapSun imx290 camera(looks identical to yours), the camera PCB says 290 and I haven't been disappointed with the quality(this is my first microscope camera tho) purchased from Shenzhen LapSun Store December 2020

May i ask where on reddit you found the help for discovering how to check the sensor...a link to the reddit page maybe so i can check it out?

Funny thing is that I've been trying to find IMX290 manual focus one... There's a few listings both on eBay and Ali so I asked all of them if they are selling IMX290 (ie. what they advertise) and _all_ of them told me that IMX290 is out of production and they are all selling IMX185. So basically - all false advertisement as they advertise IMX290 and selling IMX185...

Hello, I discovered your video while looking for advice for a good quality camera and your video was a warning message for me, I would like to ask you for more advice, I would like to know if it is possible to buy a chassis and customize this camera, that is to say do as you did? and which microscope camera would you recommend?

So the term you are looking for is dynamic range. Each sensors has a certain amount of ~f stops or dynamic range meaning how much/little light is needed to produce a viable image.

Thank you for sharing this 'trouble AND great frustration' you must have felt. I have learned from it. You looked very calm telling the story, but you must be so angry. Sorry for that. Wishing you well!

KIKI what about the IMX385. Do you know anything about this sensor?

Thanks for sharing. Sorry you got scammed. But now thanks to you hopefully we won't.

What is the usb to serial reading softwear ????....

I just place en order today and I hope that I will received what I was paying for. Now I'm aware of fake products, thanks for your sharing

Sorry to hear that 😕😕😕

Is the 54 Led ring light just as bright as the 144 Led ring lights?

do you have a link to real IMX290 ?

As a guess, the vendor took a cheaper camera and engraved it with the Eakins logo.

RU-vid is SOOOO bad recently... I've been looking into soldering related videos for like 10 days now... And I only found your channel because I was explicitly looking for the 48mp camera you reference... But your channel is gold to me even without that! YT dropping the ball soooo much lately...

I have the same exact issue you have with reflections on my camera from the same seller. Thanks to your great video I've opened my camera to check, but it seems to have a new type of PCB that doesn't have the sensor model printed on the PCB, so I do not know if it is the XCAMTOP4K8MPA IMX334(C) as it claims and I can't seem to find the test points. The sensor controller board is also different and has two PCBs stacked/screwed together. I bought the fyscope polarizer on ali because it was the only one I could find with glass lens and not plastic. It does completely remove the reflections and increase image quality, but at the cost of some minor details. Tilting the board also completely removes reflections with great quality, similar to that of their description. Try tilting the board or moving your ring light by hand somewhere else and you'll see what I mean. I'm now looking into getting alternative light source to change the angle of the light. If you want links or image examples of the image/polarizer/sensor/controller let me know. It's kind of questionable to use description images that are different from actual product, if you zoom into the description photos you can see that image might be photoshopped on to their the monitor. They were probably using a different light source. But I think they might have accidentally shipped you the wrong sensor.

If you paid using PayPal you’ll be able to open a case with them to try and get a refund. Sorry to hear this happened to you. Some credit cards also offer fraud protection and you may be able to get your money back that way if the seller not giving you a refund.

What you need to improve the recording quality are some high brightness gooseneck lights. AMSCOPE make good quality ones and Eakins actually make good ones as well. Your concerns here about getting the wrong sensor are 100% valid and justified but that's not the reason the image quality is so poor. The reasons are three-fold. 1. Your ring light is being reflected directly into the microscope. This is the primary reason. Your ring lights are shining straight down at the board and being reflected into your microscope lens. No camera sensor can fix this. You need directional lights so that the light bounces away from the camera lens so that your microscope only gets "indirect" light which will significantly reduce the glare. When you focus on the switch PCB you have a massive reflective shield and a ton of reflective flux residue causing a lot of glare. 2. You're using a trinocular microscope. The aliexpress listing you showed with the demo footage is using a monocular microscope. They're using optics that attach directly to the camera module which means the camera gets all of the light reflected into the optics. That's why it looks better. In your case the trinocular microscope uses a mirror to reflect some of the light into the camera optics tube and away from the eye pieces. This means that the camera gets less light hitting the sensor. This translates to a poorer image in general. This can be offset a little with high end optics or bigger sensors on the camera but the gains in quality are minimal as ultimately it's down to how many photons hit the camera sensor. The most important thing to the camera is that more light is hitting the sensor. Trinocular microscopes divide the available light using internal mirrors so will always result in worse image quality. 3. You have flux all over that Nintendo switch board you used as a demonstration which is highly reflective and combined with your direct overhead lighting is causing your poor image quality. So yeah, if you're chasing good image quality you have a couple of choices. 1. You can get some directional gooseneck lights. 2. Shell out your hard earned cash for a very high end camera. 3. Switch to a monocular microscope and use an LCD to view your work. All three options combined will yield the best results. The first option alone is the most affordable option that'll yield the best result for your money.

شكرا جزيلا على هذا الفيديو يعطيك الله الف عافية

Thank you so much, you are so good and honest person, you get new folwer:) I learn some new things from you, it is posible to read camera data and find the original IMX185🥰🥰🥰

What's the software that u use?

Hi I bought it from same seller advertised as imx290 autofocus sensor but when I received picture quality was not great so I followed your video opened it up and it turns out to be imx307, I raised dispute with aliexpress waiting

Thanks for letting us know. That's very bad, bro. I am looking to buy Hayear HY-6110 with IMX334. It's the best when it comes to sensor specs, but I am now skeptical if they are using an original sensor or not.

Hello, I'm afraid that two years is too late to comment, but if what I'm about to tell you doesn't help, maybe it will be useful to someone else who comes across this comment, just as your video has been helpful to me. Well, after watching the video, I would say that the biggest problem I see is not the camera itself but the lighting you are using and the surface of what you are trying to observe. First of all, the light. I saw that you were using an LED ring light around the lens, which is not the best way to illuminate with a stereoscopic microscope. The reason is that the lighting is perpendicular to the object being observed and parallel to the microscope lens. Considering that reflections depend on the angle of incidence of light, the result in the images is a result of that "direct front lighting." The situation is even worse because what you were observing was a PCB that has a very reflective surface. You can try cutting one or two rings of white paper and placing them in front of the LEDs as a diffuser to see if you can reduce the glare a bit. To avoid and eliminate many of those bright reflections, you can use lateral lighting. You will lose most of the front ring lighting, which you could keep as low as possible only to fill or lighten the darker shadows. But also, if you place one, or preferably two, lateral lights pointing at a 45-degree angle to the surface you want to illuminate, theoretically, you won't have any reflections. Well, that's just theory because with bare bulbs or LEDs, light travels in all directions, and you will still have many reflections. If you really want to get rid of virtually all reflections, I recommend getting polarized light. You'll be surprised. I dare say that was the type of lighting that the people at Eakins were using in that video you posted as a comparative example at the beginning of your video. If you use polarized side lighting at 45 degrees and very low front light to fill the shadows, I'm sure you could get a very contrasted and evenly illuminated image. The second thing I want to say is that the microscope you are using does not seem to have very good optics. The image you show never appears sharp, at least in the video I've seen, and in the brighter areas, you can see fringing or chromatic aberration (magenta color) that occurs when poor-quality lenses fail to make the different wavelengths of light that pass through them coincide again at the same point. It would be something similar to when in a printing press the inks of a trichromatic process do not overlap perfectly, and the resulting image is not sharp or does not have the correct color, so to speak. That could also be the reason I told you the image didn't look sharp, although there could be other reasons. If the lenses are not very bad, you may not notice it, unless your eyes are very used to seeing images since the brain reinterprets and corrects the image to some extent, but the camera does not correct anything and captures what is, good or bad. As for the falsification of sensors, it's a bit concerning because you don't really know what to expect. Supposedly, you are buying one thing, and they sell you another of lower quality and price. What catches my attention, now that I am looking for a microscope camera and was searching on Aliexpress, is the disparity in types and prices, even among cameras that seemingly have the same external appearance. It is very likely that the Chinese use the same exterior design to save costs and vary only the electronics of different models. And here is also the danger of encountering unscrupulous sellers willing to deceive buyers and maximize their profit margin. If you've made it this far, I apologize for the length of this message, and I wish you a happy day, night, or whatever it may be wherever you are.

How do you connect your camera to video

Thanks. I was looking at Eakins a while back but after chatting with them I just didn't feel they were the professional company that I thought they were from the review videos on YT.

Oh my god! That looks worse than my $30 usb microscope camera! By the way, I've been experimenting with arducam type image sensors to make a diy microscope camera. I have a setup coming tomorrow that is less than $50USD for 8mp/2k camera sensor and 8x-100x lens. For some reason arducam type pcb cameras went up greatly in price on amazon but you can still find deals from time to time. I will try to update with the results in a video.

Isn't there a polarizing filter for these kind of cameras that'll decrease the reflections?

Merci pour votre vidéo. C'est une honte de vendre un produit bas de gamme et faire croire que c'est de la qualité :-( . merci beaucoup pour vos explications :-)

The problem there are too many variants of the same shop.

These strong reflections that you see in the video come from the ambient light being too focused or the ring light being too strong. A matt 120cm x 60cm LED panel is ideal for the workplace. Then you have clean lighting like in the advertising video. The beam angle of the ring light is too close to 90° to the board so it reflects too strongly into the camera. It would be better if the ring light had a larger diameter then this problem would not occur.

Looks like some HDR mode is on 8:41. It might be LED lighting is too high. I don’t know. Just trying to help.

Got my scope from Eakins, chosen more expensive 8.3MP Sony sensor. It described as HDMI + Type-C + USB + TF, simply has no USB . Was packed bad, it was nothing but luck it has arrived fine. I even made a video of unpacking at delivery point. And conversation with seller was difficult. The only "Sony" word in 27 kb log is in phrase "IR Sony protocol handler initialized". However, start-up log contains "Connect IMX415_HDR_init_driver linear to sensor pad 0", and internal sensor looks 100% identical to Sony IMX415 photos I've found on internet. IMX415 specifications match with scope specifications. Found some protection on USB and HDMI data lines which is nice. Despite lost USB port and some minor details scope is good for me.

Had a similar problem. Bought eitkin trinocular microscope with cheap camera 2k quality , worked great, crystal clear. Then decided to buy a better camera, so bought one like the smaller cheaper one you have, and it is terrible, so much of reflective, you cant see a thing. I am currently trying to get a refund, but they blaming my lense.

Have you found a legit seller with the IMX290 yet? I'm looking for this camera also.

Is there +5V on pin 18 of the HDMI connector?

Reflection is not because of camera!, it is because of your light source and angle of light going back to sensor!, if you change your light source point you will not get any reflection!

Besides, check it out, please. Is + 5V supplied to pin 20 (VDD5) FE1.1S USB 2.0 HIGH SPEED 4-port HUB Controller? My FE1.1S 20 controller has a pin off the board.

where can i buy original imx 290 best regards

What is ur old camera ?

can u just upgrade the sensor ?

That sucks , thanks for the video. I’m not ordering from the same company but we are always rolling the dice from china.

So, the price alone didn't made you suspicious beforehand?

Hi Kiki, great video, thanks for letting us know, I'm in the middle of buying a camara and I have seen the one you talked about so I'm staying wel clear. Can you please tell me what camara did you buy in the end and are you happy with it. If there's anybody to go by, it's you :) Billy

you should still be able to get your money back as the item is not as advertised

Hi ,thanks for your video I will want to buy eakins sony imx290 ,and after watch you video i'm suspicious. I have a question what is the socket you connect to the camera and is the program . Because eakins is.very expansive in aliexpress and if the seller want to Scam me. Thanks for you video.

Sucks you got scammed 😡 I wonder why they even make a camera with the IMX185 sensor when it looks THAT bad. The only clue was the price, the IMX290 cameras were always around £400. I've been looking at them for years but was never willing to pay that much, a seller on ebay confirmed they don't make them with the 290 sensor any more. From the research I've done it looks like the only successors that come close in quality is the white camera with an IMX291 sensor, and the blue one with the IMX307 sensor. Both have autofocus and they're both expensive (£300 and £400). I guess it makes sense they make their best cameras be the autofocus ones as they can charge more for them.

I spoke to Eakins and they admitted to me that they swapped all autofocus IMX290 microscope camera to IMX307 sensors. What a shame. It seems other sellers i.e. Lapsun also did the same. If anyone knows of any listing with confirmed IMX290 sensor, PLEASE share.

If anyone can find a legit seller please let us know.

if u have reflection issue use CPL filter

Fake product link pleàse

Guys, there is a new camera in Eakins Store right now. This camera is using Sony IMX385 sensor. Alex from Northridgefix was testing this camera on his new video. Lots of improvement comparing it to IMX290. I just order it and it will arrive next month. They are selling it with objective and the cheapest is around 280€ which means that the camera cost around 260€ including free shipping.

поставь поляризаторы на источник освещения, на видео у китайцев он скорее всего используется....

very helpfull. wher to buy original

I got a Eakins camera from Eakins Store. It has way better image quality than yours. Your ring light maybe be having a negative effect. I purchased the "Newest 36MP FHD 4K 30FPS 1080P 60FPS HDMI USB Digital Industrial Video Microscope Camera C Mount For Phone CPU PCB Soldering" Cost me just under £70 in 2021. Feel like its very good value at £70

So moving on, what was your next camera?

I think mine is also fake. it doesn´t focus when I zoom in

Needs a polarizer to take that reflection away

It's sad that the sensor is really not the stated one, but you can try a different type of light source and you will be able to remove glare and reflections, even with your previous camera, NorthridgeFix did a video about it ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NtBiFHq2Qwc.html

i got tricked aswell on aliexpress bought "sony imx307" but got some panasonic shit and also without said c mounted lens :/

thank you for the proof, we have to suspect all Chinese goods, because those who trust his own products are more clear about their products

Soften your lighting, it will help with the reflections.

Watching Your comparison, both quality is way too shitty to buy I dont even see a difference. But You compare two very cheap ones. I will like to see one 4K autofocus that cost 500€ or more

I'd presume the quality of 0.35x lens adaptor is terrible, look at the chromatic abberation, lack of proper focusing. Maybe with 190 euro camera you should try something better than 20 euro 0.35x lens. Because the quality of the picture is 80% lens quality

I played Chinese roulette. Lost. Instead, IMX290 got a cheap IMX307. Thank you Eakins!

Wow. This is good info. I honestly don't thing this happened on purpose. Eakins has thousands of items for sale and moves a lot of inventory based on their Ali store numbers. Maybe they forgot to update the listing or something. Yes, they should have replied to you but again I think the reason why you got no response is because they move so much inventory, language barrier and probably short staffed to care about an issue like this. Your best bet is to have a method of payment that can allow you to easily do a dispute and get some of your money back. It's a gamble for the money you spend on Ali, there's no doubt about it. Most of the times you win, sometimes you lose.

Isn't the IMX185 not the better choice? It uses a 1/1.8" sensor @2.4MP (1944x1224) and not a 1/2.9" sensor @2.1MP, (1920x1080) so it is more light sensitive. The only difference is 108 pics/s vs. 170 pics/s.

yeah I can't find any imx290 for that price. They don't have any interest in scamming people, I don't think they wanted to scam you, rather the young girl on duty to post the article on aliexpress might have mixed it with another article. The imx185's camera costs the price you paid (around 200$). You got a different product but the price you paid corresponds to the price of the article you received. They should have had offered you to return the product refunding the return fee.

come one imx 226 cost 500Eur, and you want IMX290 autofocus for 170Eur? Are you crazy?

This seems to be more of a lighting issue than a camera issue.

Fatti rimborsare no?

wtf show me dirty pcb and camera with shit light :/

You still have their camera in the picture of your yt homepage 🙂

Hűha, majdnem megvettem 😳

Eakins did that! Good information.

The reflections are the result of your lighting setup. In the adds they are using an LED light ring and a simpler lens.

Reflection is not because the camera. You need to use polarizing filter. And a better ring light. You can find many topics on the theme.

I see nothing wrong with the camera the problem is the lighting. You need to use external lights that are located to the side of board.

fake eikins

Fakings

There ıs no problem with this camera. Problem is your shity lighting.

FRIEND PLEASE ACTIVATE THE RU-vid MULTILANGUAGE SUBTITLES, NOT ALL THE PLANET SPEAKS ENGLISH