Olympus Image of the Year Award 2019

Search for the best light microscopy images

The variety and beauty of the images, the "Image of the Year Award 2018" inspired us to honour the most spectacular light microscopic images again in 2019 - this time on a global scale!

Olympus' first "Image of the Year Global Life Science Light Microscopy Award" honors the world's most beautiful images in life science imaging. The prizes for the participants are a CX43 microscope with DP27 digital camera, X-Line high-performance lenses or an OM-D E-M5 Mark II camera. See below for more details.

Last year we had a wonderful competition with incredible pictures. We are confident that we will get even more great pictures this year. So do not hesitate to send us your best pictures.

Last year's winning image was a breathtaking fluorescence image showing the shell of a marine snail covered with algae and cyanobacteria.

2nd place was a mesmerizing image that used polarized light to give little dropplets of solidified dopamine their beautiful colors.

This remarkable picture that landed in third place shows the complicated "mouth brushes" of a mosquito larva thanks to differential interference contrast microscopy in great detail.

You can see the 3 winning pictures from last year on the upper right side.

Competition Rules

You can upload your microscope images between August 1, 2019 and January, 31, 2020. The winners will be notified in March, 2020.

Anyone over the age of 18 can participate. Olympus employees, their families, the judges, their families, and individuals engaged in the manufacturing or sales of microscopes are excluded from participation.

You can upload up to 3 images. All images must be JPEG or TIFF and have a maximum file size of 10MB.

No purchase necessary to enter or win.

After participating in the competition your image might also be depicted in Olympus campaigns worldwide and you grant us the corresponding rights of use. You will be credited as the image creator so please be aware that you have to be the originator of the uploaded images and that images have to be free from any third party rights.

Our jury will judge the submitted images on artistic and visual aspects, scientific impact and microscope proficiency.

Prizes

One global winner and one regional winner from the participants in each of the three regions (Asia, Europe, Americas) will be selected.

Global winner: select either CX43 microscope with DP27 digital camera, or X Line objectives.

Regional winner: win an OM-D E-M5 Mark II digital camera.

For further information please click here.