The core of any illumination device is the light source. The light emission is produced mainly by a laser, diode or a light bulb. NIS-Elements does not distinguish between wavelength modules of these light sources and all are controlled in a similar manner. Basically you select which wavelength(s) you want to use for illumination and set its light intensity. The selected wavelength modules are turned off until you activate the 
shutter button usually placed in the bottom left corner of the control panel.
A motorized stage being initialized could strike the objective. Before initializing the stage, make sure that the objective is away from the stage. If a motorized Z drive is available, use the Devices > Objective Clearance command to prevent collision.
Some microscopes enable you to reduce the range of movement of the motorized stage by setting limits within the configuration window.
Display the configuration dialog window (within the Devices > Device Manager
window).Move the stage to the position where the limit shall be set.
Click the appropriate button.
Set all the limits by repeating this procedure.
Caution
This procedure can not be used if you already set some limits and would like to broaden them at the same time. NIS-Elements will not allow you to move the stage to any out-of-limits position. What you need to do is to reset the limits within the configuration window beforehand.
Workstations can be equipped with two independent Z drive systems, one coarse (slow) and the other fine (fast). Typically, the first one is used for specimen manipulation in Z axis, when changing objectives, etc., the second one is used for auto-focusing. The following text explains how NIS-Elements handle the two Z drives.
The active Z drive is used when performing auto-focus.
The Devices > Enable Mouse Joystick Z in Live command applies to the active Z.
The current positions of both Z drives (Z1, Z2) and the absolute Z position (sum of Z1 and Z2) are displayed in the main status bar. If there is not enough space to display all these values, only the “Absolute Z” value is displayed (Z1 and Z2 still appear in a tool-tip). The absolute Z value appears in the Z Series Setup.
The concept of Active Z enables user to select the preferred Z drive:
You can select the Active Z device in the Devices > Mouse Joystick and Auto Focus Z menu.
If you have a regular Z drive and a Piezo Z drive installed, two commands appear in the Devices menu and under a selectable button in the Z Series Setup window:
Some acquisition functions support the concept called “continuous movement”. The principle is simple, a motorized Z drive or an XY stage moves continuously while it triggers the camera which acquires images on the fly. This significantly speeds up the process as opposed to the previous approach when the motorized stage stopped to acquire every image.
Caution
The functionality is available only with certain hardware equipment. See Supported hardware.
The following functions support continuous movement:
The following camera models support continuous movements.
Ji camera
ACA5472_17um, BOA8100_16CC, BOA8100_16CM
Flash, Fusion, Fire
Kinetix, Prime95B