MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

No brands from the finite era are fully interchangeable. Unless you're doing something weird or specific you ahouldn't have too much trouble filling a nosepiece with objectives that are the correct type or probably close enough.

Show pics please.
This sort of mix and match happens all the time in lans. Stuff is always getting moved and consolidated.

Halogen bulbs should still be cheap if sourced right but LED replacements are doable. I use a CREE x-pl led in my epi illuminator and it's worked great for me. But it will take some careful DIYing, there aren't great drop in replacements.

Oddly I think Nikon (?) used a similar cable plus which is what I was thinking of.

I am pretty sure those would have accepted eyecups, which might have been lost or cracked.

Yeah, that's an odd standard meant for a particular power supply (presumably ao you din't accidentally plug it into the wrong one).

If you are serious about wanting DIC it's important to be flexible. Rather than building a particular system and hoping you find the right DIC set you will probably have a lot more luck (and probably spend a lot less) casting a wider net and finding a dic system, any dic system, to build the rest ar...

imkap wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 14, 2023 9:59 pm

Ps. Maybe you know this already but I'll write anyway. T2 and m42 are the same diameter but not the same thread.

They're the same thread if you twist hard enough

Just some random eyepieces. Not sure who used 33mm ones, some sort of dinosaur for sure.

You can use a donut magnet and a metal ball or one of these magnetic phone mounts too. https://a.co/d/bH6Rwat

Are you looking to just put an objective directly on your camera? There isn't a single adapter, you need variable spacers or a bellows to go between your camera and the objective. These are modular bits and fairly inexpensive. For aps-c I would use m42 spacers and helicoids, but it may cause issues ...

It depends if you have a normal illuminated base or a brightfield/darkfield base. Darkfield won't work with a frosted plate.

Well overall I'd say you'vd done something quite remarkable. Again thanks for all the detail, it was a fun read. I hope you enjoy the scope!

It's fascinating, though I was a bit confused by H. Had aome of the lenses been cleaned and then put back in backwards?
Should be very helpful for anyone else taking the same path in the future.

E is for educational or economical. They're the budget model either way, smaller field of view and probably worse color correcrion. I am not familiar with cfwa eyepieces though. The CFW and CFWNs are the higher end options, and they did have one rarer type with premium cllor correction. Personally I...

All you need is a 38mm to m42 adapter
Like https://www.ebay.com/itm/274696367794
And a flat m42 to t mount adapter
https://www.ebay.com/itm/155753235925

When you say you can't get the sensor in the right spot, you mean to be parfocal with the eyepieces correct? Because as you mentioned, it positions the sensor too "far away" to be parfocal. Yes, exactly. And of course if you just refocus to move the image circle knto the sensor you theoretically ar...

Could you elabroate a bit on that? I'm very happy you got it to work!

It comes down to two things: how big the image circle is and where it's positioned. By default the smz-u puts out an image that's a bit over 27mm in diameter, which is actually larger than it was specced for. If you put an aps-c sensor with a ~27mm diagonal right on the image you get a nice image th...

The Nikon standard photography setup does make it annoying to use a dslr via direct projection since the flange focal distance is just a bit too long. There are workarounds but nothing beats buying two cheap mechanical adapters and just having it work.

How much do you want to spend? One easy solution is to get an aps-c mirrorless camera and directly adapt it to the photo port with no intermediate optics.

It is fortunately quite easy with the SMZ-U. Almost any kind of camera can be accomodated.

Congratulations! I think you will enjoy it a lot. Stage plate replacements aren't too hard to find, even on amazon sometimes iirc. The mirror should also be fairly easy to fix.

Shading like that is common with slightly mismatched DIC prisms, isn't it?

Apart from the question of how much money spent, I think the most relevant question is what it is going to be used for. Absolutely. If there's no strong direction a stereo is a good general purpose scope that's easy to use and practical (splinter removal). But it's not good for hunting tardigrades.

A stereo microscope. Smz-1b, 2b, smz-10, sz7, any wild, leica ms5, olympus sz 3045, 4045 etc

That is fascinating. As you say I don't know if it's bad news for the dic or if it's good news for the oblique. Probably the latter, you're getting really good lighting. Probably time to try it on some diatoms or other classic fun subjects.

Scoper wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 06, 2023 8:24 pm

One of the reason for buying a scope of the Big Four is for post sale support.

Only if you buy new. You can't typically expect much from them as a secondhand buyer.

The problem is usually in the head, not the zoom body, even if nothing is loose. Not 100% of the time but usually. You'd need to mix and match with known good components to isolate the issue. It's never an easy fix, usually not really possible without factory tools unfortunately.

Yeah, a good SZ7 is a remarkable scope, especially with the 15x uwf eyepieces. Just a bit annoying to get a good copy, though quite inexpensive.