Having NIS-Elements installed and all hardware accessories set up within the Devices > Device Manager 
window, you can start capturing images. Let's begin with the simplest case.
Turn the connected camera and other devices ON and start NIS-Elements.
Select a suitable hardware configuration on startup.
Make sure the Compact tab is selected with the
Acquisition 
panel displayed on the right.Select a lightpath which includes a camera (1).
Figure 111.
Display the camera image by the
Live/Smart Live tool (2).Adjust Exposure on the camera pad to get a nice image of the scene.
Capture the image by the
Capture tool (4).A new image is opened automatically and named “Captured ...”.
Figure 112. Light path tool bar for a configuration with two different cameras
Buttons for switching between lightpaths available for the current hardware configuration are displayed below the tool bar of the Acquisition panel. An icon is displayed on each button to indicate the type of lightpath:
Bightfield Brightfield acquisition.
, DIA, EPI General acquisition based on optical configurations. Different optical configurations can be created within such a lightpath.
, DIA, EPI General observation lightpath. Different optical configurations can be created within such a lightpath.
Lightpath Click this button to open the Lightpath Scheme 
panel which visualizes the current lightpath and may indicate possible errors in the setup.
In case there are some lightpaths you will not use, you can hide them from the tool bar. Click 
Configure... or using the 
RMB anywhere in the tool bar and select to open the User Visible Buttons window.
Figure 113.
(De)select any lightpaths you do not want to display. The ones with the tick icon will be displayed in the tool bar.
Optionally change the icon color (color or monochromatic icons).
If you are a user with the privilege Modify devices and light paths, you can even hide some light paths entirely. To do this, use the
Configure button in the same dialog window to open the Button Order and Visibility System Defaults window.
Figure 114.
Drag the buttons to the bottom area to hide them to the users. Change the order of the available buttons by moving the buttons in the Available to Users area. Quick single-click button setups are available in the Quick Setup section in the top of the window. Rename the button in the context menu over the button.
Click to confirm the selection.
Select a lightpath button with the icon . A tool bar with optical configurations appears below the lightpath buttons. The usage of optical configurations (OCs) within the Acquisition panel is the same as in the previous versions of the software where optical configurations were global. The difference is that only OCs created within the currently selected lightpath are displayed here and in the main tool bar of NIS-Elements. Other optical configurations are available only after switching the lightpath.
Note
To change the described default behavior, click RMB in the OC tool bar and select Show OCs from all Lightpaths. Moreover, particular OCs can be hidden from the tool bar by the Select Visible Configurations command from the same context menu.
Figure 115.
Add Click this button to call the Calibration > New Optical Configuration 
command.
The Experiment pad is different for different microscopes. For Nikon Ji, it looks as follows:
Figure 116. Experiment pad
The first slider sets the exposure of the connected camera. Move the slider or enter a specific value into the edit box.
The second slider sets the illumination power of the connected illumination device. 
resets the illumination power value to default.
Camera ROI
The system offers the users three pre-defined ROIs and a custom one. All of the ROIs are available only if they are different from each other.
ROI set to the size of the full sensor.
Defines the ROI size (Define ROI...), specifies which buttons are shown on the pad (ROI Buttons), changes the custom ROI size and saves (Save ROI...) or loads saved ROIs (Load ROI...).