MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

In the past couple of weeks, the Internal Server Error notice has become real nuisance.

Speaking from experience, though not from blood smears. To start with, slides should be clean right out of the box. Not all newly purchased slides are such. Specifically, old slides that were not properly packed might be damaged by corrosion. Slides do have an expiry date. I bought Menzel-Glaser Sup...

Lovely family and amusing presentation !
Pirates have always been popular among children.

... There is another system that works well for low N.A. and magnification DF.. That involves using 100X and 40X phase diaphragms as DF stops for 10X and 4X objectives. I don't know if that works for all phase systems but it does for the infinity one, I use... The 100X phase diaphragm serves as DF ...

I asked this to the company. They said about minerals and rain being isotonic. Not sure if this also indicates it is buffered. Apparently, what they mean with "rain water" is not pure rain drops collected during rainfall into an inert container, but freshly accumulated rain water on the ground - am...

Uglier in black than in white. We are too much accustomed to classic design though.

I would inquire with Carolina about this. Tap water can contain disinfecting chemicals, too much hardness, rust from plumbing, copper traces etc. So I can understand why it can be objectionable. However both rainwater and distilled water do not normally contain chemicals other than dissolved gases t...

A diffuser reduces the intensity of the illumination considerably. The frosted glass used in the old Zeiss collimator works in addition to Kohler setup and does not replace it. As Scarodactyl commented above, find a single die LED. Then optimize its position in the optical train to achieve Kohler. P...

Same super durable, heavy round metal case as in the early Wild stereoscopes (M3 etc). Impressive.

There's a notion that if you can smell the plastic, it's outgassing, and you don't want to use much of it near either humans or sensitive optical instruments: https://www.directplastics.co.uk/news/why-engineering-plastics-outgas-and-why-should-you-care Personally, I avoid the PVC covers often suppl...

Great study and very appropriate music. Thanks !

I haven't seen a rationale or defense of Zeiss' 165mm reference tube length, but researchers seem to like their infinity scopes - especially the inverted ones. If "research" in this context means biology, biomedical studies, biophysics, clinical research etc, then IMHO researchers in these fields a...

The yellowish disk looks like a long pass filter with 455nm cutoff. That as, at 455nm transmittance is ~50% and above 455 it is near 100%. I think it is a dyed glass filter, not interference. If there is an arrow mark on the metal sleeve, the filter should be installed (in the appropriate device, no...

AFAIK, if you refer to OLYMPUS objectives, SPlan means super plan. Dplan is slightly less planar than SPlan.
They are described by Alan Wood on the Olympus web site.
Whatever the nickname, I have used both Splans and Dplans and they are great.

Congratulations on first success. The starter kit you bought indeed consists of strongly fluorescent chemicals. Fluorescein is moderate but still OK. A tiny drop of a solution of the dye in a liquid on a slide (and covered with a coverslip) will make an appropriate sample. The fluorescence shines on...

I would guess that the filters in port 4 (of the four ports of the carrier) are the Rhodamine combination 467901 + 466305 + 467869.

And in port 3, the Fluorescein combination 467966 + 466304 + 467865.

Sorry for the delayed response.
I would guess that the filters in port 2 (of the four ports of the carrier) are the combination 467968 + 466302 + 467861.

So this is the true reason why such photo eyepieces have become rare and expensive, globally. Because most of them hide in bubble shelters.

Yes, some of those, at least the non-interference ones, are familiar Schott filters. Zeiss collaborated with Schott. BP means band pass, LP mean long pass. Bandpass of the colored glass filter is not the same as that of an interference filter. But for non critical work it can work OK. Filter thickne...

In principle, any dye or other fluorophore is characterized by its excitation and fluorescence spectra, which in turn determine the set of filters. Usually a "set" consists of an excitation filter, dichroic mirror and emission filter. They are arranged within a frame called "cube". Not all older mic...

Tom Jones wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 04, 2023 3:58 pm

https://www.alanwood.net/downloads/olym ... ky-tip.pdf

Thanks for this link ! did not know that objective repair was also covered by Carl !

Adam Long wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 04, 2023 10:23 am

...I guess the fluorescence may be pretty dim?

Yes. Fluorescence in general is dimmer by orders of magnitude than the excitation light. Often, fluorescence microscopy is done in a half-darkened room.

IMHO this is overlooking the danger of viewing UV directly. [/b]Damage to the eye can occur. When using an UV illuminator on the microscope, I would double check that no radiation is directly emitted into the viewing optical path. This mostly depends on the quality of the dichroic mirror and excita...

Acridine Orange seems to be the commonest dye - but almost as hazardous as a UV illuminator. Is it a big deal? Yes, acridine orange is about as hazardous an UV-illuminator which is much less hazardous than a walk on the beach under a blue sky. IMHO this is overlooking the danger of viewing UV direc...

I would suggest to never ever soak or immerse the objective in any liquid, any solvent. If a drop or a few drops do not work, do not be tempted to flood.

1. Gas lighter fluid is likely butane or mostly butane - certainly not kerosene 2. You might try gentle heating of the objective in an oven at 30-35 degrees celsius for dissolution. But, since you already tried Xylene to no avail, possibly a tiny solid dust particle is the culprit and not hardened g...

1. I do not know about the PM2/3, but in the Standard GFL, the attachment of the field diagram unit to the base varies slightly. Sometimes there are two lobes for small bolts that lock the unit into the base from below (from the inner side of the base) or there are none, so the unit is just inserted...

Cool stuff! Which chemical is it ? Does it yield the same crystals from water and acetone ? forgive me the stupid question, but could it be that the crystals were just washed by the acetone, not dissolved, and when the acetone evaporated, they just reappeared on the slide, only shifted to other loca...

Turret phase contrast condenser Cat . 465277 includes a DF position that gives nice DF with low-mag dry objectives. The condenser must be oiled to the slide bottom for that purpose. So, effectively, I'd have to oil that turret condenser to the bottom of my slide for all DF , if I'm reading that cor...

Thanks, Michael. Thanks, josmann.
I have a DF oil condenser and a 100X1.3 objective and a green IF and polarizer and analyzer. Problem is, focusing
becomes difficult because the combination of all that in series darkens the FOV so much. Worth a second try though.