geo1,

Thank you for the pointers. I will definitely check out your posts. I attempted to do what I described in my earlier post and in fact it worked pretty well. The biggest problem was getting the "adaptor" (just a PCV connector with a rubber connected glued on--the PVC connector slides onto the ocular, the rubber bit fits snuggly around the camera) to really line up the camera with the ocular perfectly. Just a little bit off and the field of view vanishes. I wrapped some masking tape around the ocular (to make it a little fatter so the fit is more snug) and that helped a bit. I managed to get some pretty nice shots which I can't share at the moment (I'm at school) but I'll post them when I get home. Mostly hydrazoans (some decent closeups of the nematocysts!) and other sessile predators (stentor, etc), some desmids, well, I'll post the pics. Unfortunately I can no longer take additional pictures...because my camera died but I think I can fix it.

In other news, I was fishing through the "e-waste" bin at school and found a USB webcam. I plugged it into my laptop and it worked, just couldn't record anything (I don't have the right software for that). Resolution wasn't great, but was better with higher light conditions. My next task is to create an adapter or bracket which can hold the webcam to the ocular so that I can watch the creepies in real time on my lappy screen and use the screen capture function to "take pictures" hehe. Pretty ghetto, I know. When I get it figured out I'll post some shots.

-Adam O.