MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

There's no way not to love something with so many knobs, dials and twiddly bits. It is a thing of beauty, especially to an engineer! Like you, I'd want it just to have it.

You're really getting the hang of this 'make awesome' routine
Do you reset the camera white balance for the green filter? I'm still trying to get my noggin around this whole process.

I subscribed to his channel a while back. He manages some remarkable depth and if it is oblique, I have no idea how he manages to achieve that look. I've tried a bazillion oblique techniques and none are close to his.
I'd love to know what he does.

Great tips! For those wishing to understand illumination and how the light microscope works, this video is great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60_jgZtyR6U A tip for excessive lens CA. I've discovered that if I place a piece of white plastic, like a small piece of a ping pong ball on the top of th...

That's odd, I've used superglue to make permanent slides and it's been flawless. I used the thin version that wicks like water and works well for many things as a quick prep. I'm kinda sad mine didn't look as interesting as yours.

Welcome, and yes, fixing up old scopes is a lot of fun. I even 'fix' my non broken stuff (bad tinkerer habit). I have at two scopes in a constant state of disrepair that I'm always messing with because.. reasons
It sounds like you are well on your way to having a fun time.

That is just incredible, I hope they find some water bears too because I can't imagine tardigrades letting nematodes get away with holding the record

I was recently perusing fleabay looking for nondescript bargains and came across a listing for "old microscope" with a starting bid of $14.80 and $7.31 shipping, so I bid on it expecting to be outbid in no time but I thought, what the heck, you never know... unbelievably, nobody else bid on it. My n...

Very nice, I suspect you'll have a bumper crop of wee beasties before long.
Sadly my last 'pond' was discovered by mozzies and I had a bumper crop of nasty blood sucking vampires. I tried remaking the pond via diy methods, unfortunately it turned out more biohazard than pond

Wow, I just did a search on ebay and what you describe appears to be a GIF 550nm phase contrast. They seem to cost around $90 or so. Olympus 45mm 550nm green phase contrast interference filter, Part # 43IF550W45 I'll need to see if there is a generic version for less. https://m.ebay.com/itm/Olympus-...

Those colors are gorgeous, well done!

What type of green interference filter are you using? I'm not very familiar with other than standard filters and I've never used an interference type.

Thanks for the info, guys. Looks like I'll continue the hunt. I wish there were easier ways of finding out what heads were infinity. I see a lot of infinity Lomo and Jena objectives, and lots of heads, but no idea what works with what as there seems to be little useful info on the web regarding matc...

Those are very pretty. I do like the colors of the 16x and the inverted 40x

The Black WL is a thing of beauty, and yes, I would definitely paint the HAL black to match. As said, there are plenty of high temp paints available.

Hey all, this may seem like a daft question, but do the AO heads fit Zeiss standards? I ask because I've seen these for sale attached to a Zeiss dual head block like the one below. If this is the case, is the AO head standard 160mm-ish or is it an infinity head. I ask because my spare Zeiss frame is...

Very nice, my B&L is from 1903!

My one has the 3 objective tri-lobe furret and a spencer mechanical stage, but looks like the exact frame, including the odd 27mm occular size.

Thanks for that, fan. Yes, I've seen loads of cheap metallurgical apos, epi's and so on. Only seen one set of infinity eyepieces but no infinity heads so-far. The focus on the Biolam is awful imo, luckily I have a spare Zeiss standard carcass to mess with and also a great Tiyoda focus block with ext...

Great stuff!
Superb images and subjects, another sub from me.

Beautiful colors, that BX40 is a nice machine.

One of these days I plan on adding a vertical/epi illuminator to my lomo but one thing I noticed is that a lot of the good 'reflected light' objectives are infinity corrected and I don't recall seeing anything about how to make use of these on lomo microscopes. Is this something only available on hi...

thanks for the added info. Even with the diagrams shown on the old forum I'm still at a bit of a loss as to how it works, I guess I need to see an example implemented. I see how I *think* it might work, then suffer a brain fart once the gears start turning. I'm not as quick on the uptake as I was 40...

The phase isn't as pronounced with fully transparent subjects, I think my phase rings are a bit too small and too 'made of ink' to be ideal. It still works better than the Jena objective though. I need to do more experimenting. The lighting contraption I'll be writing about soon. I still need to do ...

I tried finding info on VAC without luck, just a couple of photos. I'd love to know how to set it up.

No, I made the ring to suit the objective. I don't own a phase condenser so I make all my own anyway. I do have a thing I made that I'll be doing a write-up on. It works for phase, COL, oblique, darkfield and brightfield, kind of an all-in-one lighting device I concocted to make life easier. After t...

I bought a Zeiss Jena 10x .30 phase objective recently and was very disappointed with it's phase performance. I couldn't get it to 'phase' well at all. The objective looks fine, the phase ring, while faint, was there, it just didn't do what I was hoping. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to look that...

Hi all,

the jena phase 10x arrived and it's a bit odd, the phase ring is very faint and it doesn't phase very well, does anyone here have a jena phase objective and if so is the ring very faint on yours as well.

very nice!
I like the Pol and phase best.

Rotifers are pretty awesome, and very widespread so you should be able to find more of them quite easily. They do make good study partners as long as you can get them to stay relatively still. Unlike the simpler pond occupants, they are multi-cellular, have jaws, eyes, brains and twin turboprops to ...

My Zeiss came with one CPL and one KPL. Both are 10x 18 wide and honestly I can't tell a difference in image quality between them.

Hi all, sorry for the late responses. Yes, the lomo objectives mentioned in another thread are for this machine. Luckily for me I've had a few good breaks on equipment and the Axiostar stand was one of them. I did ask in a German forum if the head fitting was the same size as the old standard, and w...