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I just brought a microscope

Captain_Swoop said:
With substage illumination you need a proper condenser and iris to control the light and for best photographs you need to be able to focus the light onto the specimen which means Kohler Illumination which involves a condenser lens and iris on the lamp. You can improve it by getting rid of the current lamp and replacing it with a bright white LED and diffuse the light with frosted glass.
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Indeed. There is a facebook amatuer microscope group, lots of folks can help you out there with LED illumination conversion.
 
As long as we're showing off our criminally cheap microscopes, I might as well show you some.

Starting with the one I got today, which is a nice basic user, and has a very nice high eyepoint eyepiece that allows you to see well without mashing your eye into it.

new ao scope.jpg

A couple of years ago, I also got this B&L student microscope, as I recall for 5 dollars. It's also quite decent, and has the advantage that the whole body tilts, but like the AO it's not ideal for photo work, both because of the condenser hot spot and because both the angled viewer scopes require an additional adapter to fit the camera adapter.

B&L student scope.jpg

The one that turns out to be the best for photo work is this Lafayette one, which I got for 12 bucks at a yard sale a few years ago. It's nearly mint, and complete with four objectives and several eye pieces and some other stuff, all in a fitted case. No light, but the condenser moves up and down as well as having an iris, and the stage moves through an ingenious mechanism. Lafayette scope.jpg

And finally, here is the 1911 vintage B&L scope that my grandfather used in his work. It has a random-brand assortment of objectives and eyepieces, and a not quite right case. He got it used, I think, some time in the nineteen teens when he was working on his great discovery (he invented the process by which citric acid is extracted from aspergillus molds grown in shallow vats).1911 vntage B&L.jpg

I should add that I still hope to work out a better lighting scheme for one of the tilt top scopes, because one major fault of the conventional ones in photography is that the weight of the camera stresses the focusing mechanism and it tends to creep. I have to run the Lafayette coarse focus very tight in order to take pictures.
 
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I'd love it a "pro-sumer" (as much as I hate that term) digital microscope would hit the market. All of the ones out now that even beginning to be affordable are just cheap, crappy low quality webcams grafted onto a cheap microscope and even those, outside of the ones that are so cheap as to basically be toys, are pretty expensive.
 
JoeBentley said:
I'd love it a "pro-sumer" (as much as I hate that term) digital microscope would hit the market. All of the ones out now that even beginning to be affordable are just cheap, crappy low quality webcams grafted onto a cheap microscope and even those, outside of the ones that are so cheap as to basically be toys, are pretty expensive.
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What quality level are you considering and at what price level? Everyone has a different acceptance of what they consider 'affordable'.
 
By the way, one of the things I've noticed about the tilt-top microscopes is that it seems the prism is part of what makes them less suitable for photography. You can't use the viewfinder at all with them, because the prism,, when added to the prism in the camera, causes garbled images. I don't think there's polarizing involved in either, but the result resembles it, checkered or banded, and impossible to focus. The straight scopes don't do this. With a plain mirror, there's no hot spot on the traditional scopes either.

I haven't experimented with different light sources, but so far the plain old Lafayette does the best with a mirror and a bright light and the focus mechanism socked down tight. The old B&L Is not bad too despite having no condenser, and has the advantage of an extending top tube for instant zoom without optics.

I too would love to run across a computerized scope. I've seen a few advertised but never tried any.
 
With Kohler lighting there shouldn't be a 'hotspot' It was devised specifically for photomicrography to eliminate 'hot spots and give an even illumination for photography.

The Prism shouldn't cause any problems. I (along with many others) use my binocular microscope for photography by putting the camera on to one of the eyepieces, the prisms cause no problem. (Note I am not referring to stereo microscopes that also have binocular heads but to 'normal' compound microscopes with two eyepieces.

Check out http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/ the article library has lots on using cameras with microscopes.
 
Older prisms may be made of inferior glass that can cause chromatic issues and phase contrast.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
With Kohler lighting there shouldn't be a 'hotspot' It was devised specifically for photomicrography to eliminate 'hot spots and give an even illumination for photography.

The Prism shouldn't cause any problems. I (along with many others) use my binocular microscope for photography by putting the camera on to one of the eyepieces, the prisms cause no problem. (Note I am not referring to stereo microscopes that also have binocular heads but to 'normal' compound microscopes with two eyepieces.

Check out http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/ the article library has lots on using cameras with microscopes.
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Seconded (mostly). I do the exact same thing but on occasion get a brighter narrow band about 2/3 toward the left of the image. I'm mystified as to why or how.

Yet on page 1 of this thread I posted photos done via the camera up to the eyepiece method without any issue
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11170029&postcount=31
 
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Your bright band may be due to a misalignment somewhere.

You have to make sure the iris and lens on the light are exactly centred with the iris and the lens on the substage condenser and both are aligned with the objective.
I use the alignment telescope that is part of my Phase Contrast kit. It replaces the eyepiece and lets you focus on the back of the objective etc so you can make fine adjustments.
Similar results can be obtained by putting two eyepieces back to back over the tube. Some microscopes don't allow fine adjustment of the light source position though. but it is important to align the substage with the objective.
The trick is to close the iris so it is just visible around the edge of the field of view when looking at the rear of the objective. Use the fine adjustment screws to align. then do the same with the light.

What looks like flat illumination to the eye can show faults when photographed.
 
Used the stereo microscope to help me harvest some pollen onto a slide and make a permanent mount which I could then view with the compound scope.
Science ROCKS!!!!
 
Get yourself some stains and fixatives and you are up and running. You can buy individual or get a staining kit.

There are some good complete staining kits available from lab suppliers and ebay.
 
The Sparrow said:
Did a video of a critter from my wife's Beta tank. I think it might be a type of amoeba but I am probably wrong.

https://youtu.be/wHE4m8fITuA
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What was the magnification? an Amoeba is a single cell organism and looks quite different.

That looks like a Planarian or similar Flatworm

To see an Amoeba with any detail you need at least x400 mag

ETA I take that back, if you are at the right mag it could well be an Amoeba, I just re watched the video and in the second half it does look more like an amoeba than a flatworm.

Good article here http://www.micrographia.com/specbiol/protis/homamoeb/amoe0100.htm

and a bunch of informative pieces here http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/index.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/amoeba.html
 
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