Pescado said:
I'm looking for a simple compound microscope, nothing fancy, and it doesn't need to be up to snuff for emperical research. I simply have an interest in science and want to have one around for fun. It would need to be incredibly inexpensive(I'm a poor student, we're talking under $100) but also as powerful as I might need to see, for instance, protozoa. I'm not a science major and not terribly educated about microscopes beyond my basic biology classes, but I was hoping somebody here could recommend something for me. I was specifically thinking about perhaps finding a website for clearance/closeout specials, or schools that get rid of outdated equipment.
So...any recommendations?
TIA
Your best bet would be to get in contact with a reputable microscopy society, or even an amateur microscopist club and ask them. My recommendation would be to wait and not jump at the first thing that comes along because there are endless cheap (and utterly useless) microscopes on the market. A decent one doesn't cost that much more and you would be amazed at the difference.
Firstly I would recommend in general avoiding anything Chinese, as in recent years there has been a lot of cheap Chinese stuff flooding the market, they are mostly useless. The ideal is an older second hand "big name" microscope like Zeiss, Leitz, Nikon, Olympus etc. You can occasionally find the smaller models of these makes that are really very good and not very expensive, under $100 is a very tight budget though. Another thing is that if you decide to buy something, make quite sure you look through it first and try it with a few specimens. Older microscopes sometimes suffer problems such as lens delamination (the lenses are composed of multiple elements glued together and the glue has started to come apart). These can be fixed, but only by an expert lensmaker and it costs a fortune.
Also make sure you get to look through a good microscope first at some known specimens so you know what real quality looks like. Again, you should be able to find a club or society where some members have good equipment they'll let you look through.
You also need to consider what kind of accessories and/or functionality you need. For biological specimens you probably won't want episcopic (reflected light) capability, so a metallurgical microscope probably won't be much use to you. Brightfield is "normal", but is limited. For biology, dark field capability is not essential but is highly desirable. You probably won't be able to afford more advanced systems with things like phase contrast or DIC, but if you do by some remote chance get an opportunity for a scope with those capabilities, grab it quick!
Finally, it may also be worth asking around universities if they have any old scopes they don't want. Sometimes they just throw them away, especially if they are damaged. If you get a damaged model of a big name make, then repairing the damage or replacing the damaged part may not be too difficult as many good scopes are modular. One common problem that affects older East German Zeiss scopes for example is that the grease in the bearings hardens and the scope siezes up. All it needs to fix it is careful dismantling, cleaning and regreasing. Sometimes even a little heat from something like a hairdryer will do the trick.
And I would strongly recommmend thoroughly exploring and reading as much as possible on this site:
http://www.microscopyu.com/ you'll learn a lot, and believe me, you won't regret it if you get into microscopy because it's full of valuable techniques and information and it will also put you in a much better position to know what you want before you start.
Hope that helps, good luck!
