MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Are the horizontal dark/light patters in the image below interference lines? Sometimes I can see the light shimmering. What could be the cause and (how) can it be avoided?

End of the day the 3D-printed dark field filters arrived and I put one in my filter slide. Beautiful sight, but after several minutes I saw smoke coming out of the filter slide and the plastic filter was melting. Didn't know the temperature under the condensor would get that high. Maybe I do somethi...

Thank you for the image. Maybe I run into one on ebay, now that I know what I should be looking for.

Some pictures of my self made filter slides. The first one shows the polarization filter, consisting of one rectangular slide fitting ito the slit under the eyepiece block and a round one (piece of polarizing foil glued over a hole, drilled in a petri dish lid), fitting nicely over the field lens an...

A way of checking the position of the swing out lens would be to remove the frosted lens in front of the lamp and the lamp itself. Then make something holding a laser to mount in the hole of the lens at the back of the lamp house and point the laser at the field iris. Then (I think) the swing out le...

Thanks, I ordered the 8 form test slide.

Thanks for the link. What does '12 form' mean? Does it mean 12 slides or 12 diatoms on one slide? What should be best to order?

Today the adapter of my Panasonic GX1 micro 4/3 camera arrived. I was looking at some mould (fungus?) from the wet wall of my girlfriends cellar and took some photographs of it, through the 10x objective and polarization filter. No lens is used. adapter.jpg schimmel_1.jpg schimmel_2.jpg schimmel_3.j...

Even though this virtual image was hard to view though the base port (because it's at an angle) it still showed the two fuzzy filament images, enabling me to align them with respect to each other and to separate them enough so that they weren't blocking each other (even though they emit light they ...

I took the lamp house from the microscope and pointed it at the back of a black leather chair. Much better visible light patches now. First image below is the two light patches vertically aligned. Second is the two patches touching each other and the third image is the defocused image of the two. Th...

The reason there are two images is simply to increase the illumination by capturing as much of the light emitted by the filament as possible. The first and slightly brighter image is formed by the forward facing part of the filament. The second image is formed by reflecting back (using a mirror) th...

Thank you both for all the help. I can do it now, but I don't understand everything. What I think I understand is that the goal of the alignment is (1) getting as much light as possible on the specimen (so not in other directions, missing the specimen) and (b) a uniform illumination of the specimen....

OK, I found the two reflections. Even thought I saw a very faint filament in the weaker one. I brought them together until the touched iets other.Then tried to blur them with the moving lamp house lens (lens between lamp and microscope housing), but that is very difficult because this lens moves to ...

I had checked (and did now again). The only filter I have is a polarization filter and I did not use that during the aligning proces. Both parts of this filter were removed from the microscope. I am very sure no filters were placed in the lightpath. Maybe the reason I can't see the wire extensions i...

I played a bit more with the Kohler illumination. I followed the instructions of the lamp house article as good as I could, but whatever I tried, I could not see the two pins of the filament shown on the pictures. So what I did was focusing as good as I could on a piece of paper on the field lens.Th...

John, I assume you mean the black lever to lock the lamp house against the microscope stand. It is in the upper position indeed. I started a quarter rotation to the left and then rotated clockwise until I couldn't rotate further, which was in upper position. Should I start in a quarter rotational po...

John, I turned to up/down knob all the way anti clockwise, which is to the lowest position of the bulb. I set the bulb verical and - to the eye - centered in the lens. I also made a piece of paper with concentruc circles to place over the field lens (the lens under the condenser). When I shine a (no...

I made a photograph of my lamp house (see below). On the other side of the lamp house are two knobs for moving the front lens and for moving the lamp sideways. I think it's the same as yours. The spring to prevent the bulb from moving side ways broke when I removed the lamp some time ago, when I was...

Do you mean images of the condensor?

OK, I didn't know that lens was frosted, thanks. I followed your procedure. I understand how it works, but I don't know if I made it better or worse. The knobs on the lamp house do work, but not smoothly and I don't think they can move far enough. When I look in the eyepiece hole without an eyepiece...

OK, I can clearly see the diafragm in the tilted slide. I suppose the dark straight lines shown in your photograph it what I should see. On the back side of my lamp house is a lens that can be pulled further out (or pushed further inward). The microscope came with the lens all the way in. I have pul...

The only step in the Kohler procedure in the article I couldn't do is centering the filament. Reason is I can't see the filamant in the eyepiece or anywhere else.

Thanks for the link. I am going to study it.

Here's a short video of the result: powdered sugar under polarized light.

No, there's no gluie on the filter foil. I think I get it now. It now works with two pieces of foil, in the setup as shown in the drawing 75RR posted a couple of messages ago. I made a slide with powdered sugar and now I see all kind of nice and very clear collors which I do not see without the pola...

All pieces I cut darken while rotating when looking at the blue sky and at the polarized light of a computer screen. But on the orthoplan this only workes with two pieces directly above the light source, where the polarizer is on the drawing and me looking through the eyepieces.

This is exactly how I do it. Only difference is, that the top one (the one below the eyepiece head, the analyser) is on a filter slide. I removed the eyepiece head to have a look at it and the filter is nicely in place. The darkening when rotating the one on the light source (polarizer in the drawin...

The shop owner says the filter foil is a linear polariser. Maybe it is not clear te me what I should see. What I think I should see is, that, with the filter slide (with a piece of poloarization fillter foil) in place between objectives and eyepieces and then rotating the piece of foil on the light ...

So my setup is right. I don't know if the polarization foil is linear or circular. There was no information about that on the webshop's website. I have asked the web shop owner.

I made - for my Leitz Orthoplan - a filter slide with a 25 mm hole that fits into the slit between the eyepieces and the objectives - just under the black eyepiece holder- and glued a piece of polarizing foil on it. I placed another piece of polarizing foil on the light soure, below the condenser. S...