MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Thanks for the info and link. Interesting, they make standard 1cmx1cm cuvettes along with other sizes. Is that an established production line that was transferred to China or an original one... Non-scientific glass blowers create pieces of art from soft soda-glass. Quartz was disliked by glass blowe...

wstenberg wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 22, 2019 12:14 am

My boss finally agreed to order some chambers custom made from optical quartz. Expensive, but probably the easiest solution to this problem.

Out of curiosity, it would be interesting to know how they created the leak-free quartz aquarium, if it can be disclosed.
Thanks in advance.

Do you know which process could be suitable after staining in water based stains? I was suggested to use glycerol as mountant, with something solidifying around it. What I'm not sure is how the glycerol will work with the water based stains - they may leak out of the specimen. Another Idea could be...

Bob, that is a very appropriate test. What were the wavelengths in this test ? I would check favorite candidates at several wavelength ranges; although expected auto fluorescence from colorless mountants is probably excited in the UV and violet and blue light, not higher than 500nm (and the respecti...

This one is better, shows more specific staining. Acriflavine is excited at 416-430nm, depending on the solvent (416 in water). and the fluorescence peak is at 54-540nm, again depending on the medium. So violet-blue excitation and green-yellow fluorescence. The dark orange in the image is rhodamine....

Greetings mrsonchus !
One thing I do not understand: Olympus produced the BX40 model with a fixed nosepiece, then a more advanced model - the BX41 - with a removable nosepiece, then an adapter to upgrade the BX40 into a removable-nosepiece model ?

Interesting comparison. What I personally take from it: 1. The S-KPL is a very good eyepiece for photography (as previously shown by others) - no wonder it is rare and very expensive 2. In spite of the 20-30 years age difference and the infinity optics of the BX, and of course the huge price differe...

Nice image! Studying the spectrum of each filter will enable to estimate beforehand the wavelength of the excitation beam. Spectra are transmittance (percent) vs wavelength. In the seller info (link Jenoptic), one of the photos was the spectra, laid side by side. I caught them via print screen, but ...

Could a dental mirror be used for an image-reflecting sirface? I have some old sz7 trinocular add-ons with bad mirrors, and sizing a glass fsm is a pain. What would be a good test for a mirror? Looking into it with a pair of binoculars at a subject with fine detail? Ordinary sheet metal is not that...

Scarodactyl wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 18, 2019 11:12 pm

Could a dental mirror be used for an image-reflecting sirface? I have some old sz7 trinocular add-ons with bad mirrors, and sizing a glass fsm is a pain.

I cannot testify for the imaging quality (never tried); what are the allowed/wanted dimensions (l/w/t) of the replacement metallic fsm ?

Some ideas from my limited experience. I use stains only occasionally. 1. Try to make only a small amount of stock stain solution. The appropriate concentration of the dye (solid/water, weight/volume) is of the order of 0.1% (at the most IMHO). Stock solutions might be of the order of 1%. 2. If one ...

...These are the specifications of my two filter sets: Filtersatz 14 488014-0000-000 BP 510-560 FT 580 LP 590 Filtersatz 17 488017-9901-000 BP 485/20 FT 510 BP 515-565 So the order of excitation<dichroic<emission is intact. This is OK. Rhodamine emission: I found the 625 nm in this Leitz document: ...

The big microscope makers offer nice listings of filters and dyes as they like to sell their expensive stuff. For Rhodamin Zeiss has quite e few entries: https://www.micro-shop.zeiss.com/de/de/shop/filterAssistant/dyes/ If I haven't mixed this up in my short test this was a Wacker stain with Rhodam...

Hi Bob
Dental mirrors are made of steel - some kind of stainless. Thickness about 1.5mm. They are coated, and the coating is fairly strong and does not chip off.
They are flat and optically good.

Bob, There are hundreds (at least) of fluorescent dyes. The Toupview software, introduced to me by mrsonchus, is excellent and rich with features, not only image acquisition. Astonishingly, it contains a list of stains used in biology and cell structure. Look into the "Options" menu. Along with exci...

A metallic first mirror for dental and mouth treatments is cheaply sold on eBay and is (I am sure) much easier to cut than a hard disk; I used an ordinary hacksaw, 24-32 TPI grade should be good. No diamond tools were needed. Hard disks are useful as-are, spinning shiny gadgets. One reason they have...

Leitzcycler wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 16, 2019 6:24 am

Yes, through the glass surface. There are two ghost images visible blow and only one above. Thanks!

For the new mirror, a potential alternative to glue is a mirror mounting tape. It is a double sided tape, ~1mm thick, fairly heat resistant (say, up to 50-60C maybe). Or just any double sided tape.

martinprieto wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 6:36 pm

english is not my motherlenguage...

Neither is it mine!

I don't understand your second point, usually high quality daylight coversion filters are dichroic filters, and they work better when the light does not hit perpendicularly its surface. Because of this in most modern microscopes (eg. Olympus BX43/53, Nikon Ci/Ni, etc) the place to fit filters over ...

Hi Leitzcycler, Many times that effect is due to reflections produced by thick dichroic daylight filters fitted over the field lens. It occurs only with dichroic filters, not with absortion ones. To enhace its performance many scopes fit these filters slightly inclined and produce this effect. Do y...

Hi Leitzcycler, Many times that effect is due to reflections produced by thick dichroic daylight filters fitted over the field lens. It occurs only with dichroic filters, not with absortion ones. To enhace its performance many scopes fit these filters slightly inclined and produce this effect. Do y...

Bob, The first principle in fluorescence microscopy has been - create a darkroom or at least a darkened area around the microscope. Fluorescence is weaker than other light sources by orders of magnitude. Fellows construct a "dark chamber" by means of a hanging U-form frame and a black cloth curtain ...

Thanks Bob, Do you positively identify vibration-noise in the images ? The microscope is small and lightweight (about 7 Kg, at the most) and sits on five 2cm x 2cm x 0.4cm squares of Sorbothane; those are laid on a 20cm x 30cm x 0.4cm ceramic tile, that in turns rests on 4 small low Teflon-coated ha...

That is an ispirig idea, Doron. When the upper edges of the glass sides are angled ca. 45° and a bit too long this would even allow to put pressure downwards onto the lower side. In water and heating installations this teflon tape has not been able to take in the place of hemp though. It is not ver...

... ... Just had another idea which might perhaps work, and does not use adhesive. The adhesive or sealant is the Achilles ankle of the above designs. It is possible to wrap the slide with a flat Teflon tape (the white tape used for pipe sealing, cheaply available in hardware stores). If a slide is...

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Hello, I was thinking of oblique-relief-phase contrast attempts so dug a strew slide of benthic marine diatoms, and searched for a large one among the many 20-30um frustules. These diatoms I had collected about 1.5 year ago, gently cleaned with SDS+EDTA +3% H2O2 and mounted in NOA61 (not the best mo...

This is for the light sheet microscope. The proper containers are large cuvettes, Maybe about 55mm x 65mm and 25mm deep. They are made of some type of optical glass since the laser illumination has to pass through them. The imaging is through the open top of the container and doesn't pass through t...

...Its a nice microscope with multiple lasers and top of the line planapo objectives. Maybe one day decades from now they will start popping up on ebay and come into the possession of the highest bidder. Those multiple lasers, among other features, make present day confocal an unlikely candidate fo...

There are specific mitochondrial stains, yet they are very expensive....