Patent ID: 6917377

Claim:
A microscope system in which an electronic camera is used to pick up an observation image by a microscope, comprising: a controlling section for setting an image pickup operation of an image pickup element in said electronic camera to an optimum state in accordance with a state of at least one of an optical system combination for a projection magnification of at least an objective lens and a photo eyepiece on a microscope side, an observation method, and lighting conditions; a microscope controlling section for controlling an operation of said microscope; and an image pickup element driving section for driving said image pickup element, wherein said image pickup element driving section has a high speed reading mode for driving the image pickup element to produce an image signal by binning or thinning reading, and a low speed reading mode for driving the image pickup element to produce an image signal with a greater number of pixels than the image signal produced in the high speed reading mode; wherein said controlling section sets an image pickup element drive mode of said image pickup element driving section to the high speed reading mode, while the controlling section detects operation information outputted from said microscope controlling section.