Video capture software for photomicroscope

[Joel Hammer]

At work we are going to buy a fancy digital camera and photo microscope.
We have no experience with digital photography.
This will have a firewire connection. We will be buying our own computer
and the assumption is it will run windows and we will use the software
supplied by the vendor for video capture and editing.
Roughly, the steps you have to do are the following:
1. Focus the image on the computer screen. A nuisance since the computer
lags a second or two behind the camera focus.
2. Snap the image (a mouse click)
3. Review the captured image. (takes one or two mouse clicks)
4. Save the captured image by clicking the correct icon. You then have
to type in a unique name for the image, which will be something like:
02-S-8000-1. Then, hit save again.
Repeat as often as needed.
5. Run a program to burn the photos to a CD.


This software is a nuisance to use. Physicians will be taking pictures with
this thing, and they have a very low threshold for bother. I wasn't too
impressed by the presentation by the vendor, who really didn't seem to think
all these steps were a bother. Believe me, they were.

So, my question are:
1. Should we expect that there s a good way to synchronize the camera
and ocular focusing. We do this with our film camera. Why not with with
a video camera?
2. Is there a piece of video capture software out there, any OS, since
we will buy any computer we want, which will:
  1. Allow one click video capture to the hard drive?
  2. Allow the files to be saved with automatic naming, say in a sequence
like: 02-S-8000-1  02-S-8000-2 and so on, once you set the base number
02-S-8000?
  3. Automatically edit the image as it is saved to place the base number,
02-S-8000 in a convenient spot in the image?
  4. Allow easy erasing of the last photo taken (one click), since there is
always a chance for error with a one click method?
  5. Allow easy (one click) review of the photos taken so far, with easy
erasure of undesirable images?
  6. Allow one click burning of the photos to a CD?

Now, with linux, I imagine all these things could be arranged with a
bash script and a nice command line video capture program. I could  get
linux installed on this thing, certainly as a dual boot, since I will
be having a major say in what we get and how we do this.

Any suggestions appreciated,

Thanks,
Joel