First stereoscope

[edvf]

Today I received my first stereoscope, an XT3c (only learned the model from the manual), with advice from several members of this forum, thank you! It feels a bit awkward to post this here, as all microscopes I've seen in this section are in a different league. Anyway, been testing it tonight, and I'm quite happy with it! 10x EPs, 1x and 3x objectives, incident/transmitted light (1 LED each), needs to be plugged to the mains.

As I mentioned in another thread, my goal is to share it with my almost-4-year-old. He showed a lot of interest... on the microscope itself. The dual light, switching the frosted glass and opaque stages, playing with the focuser, all these he liked. Looking through the microscope, not so much interest. Perhaps my fault, I've only gone through a few boring samples, no critters yet. He wanted to look at some of his toys, but most are way too big. Some people posted on a different thread that he's too young, and I think they are right . Anyway, I still have hope on insects, and in any case I myself like it a lot!

The focuser seems to work very well, no need for fine focuser at 30x. I'm very happy with the optics, most likely because I'm blessed with not having tried any good microscope previously. Things I don't like:

• Poor eye relief, glasses user here.
• Rather difficult to find the correct IPD to have a good view with both eyes. Not a problem for me, but it means my son will probably not have a good view for a long time.
• No variable light intensity. This is not a problem for the incident light, which has a nice intensity level, but I feel it makes the transmitted one less useful. I still have to find something to look at where the transmitted light works better. I think it could be easy to install a potentiometer.

Attached some pictures of scope and a stamen, taken with a handheld cell phone camera. Mostly here in case there's some very obvious problem with the image.

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b2.jpg (173.86 KiB) Viewed 4709 times

c2.jpg (162.83 KiB) Viewed 4709 times

[75RR]

Stereoscope looks fine - great first images using your phone.
You should look into stacking, it is a wonderful tool!

I am afraid you will probably have to wait a couple of years or so before your son is old enough to develop an interest in microscopy.
Not to worry - time flies! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy using it.

[zzffnn]

My 6 year old son likes viewing our micro crystal (mineral) clusters under my stereo scope. His favorite is a purple amethyst. My 2 year old follows him, but I doubt the 2yo understands it.

[edvf]

Stereoscope looks fine - great first images using your phone.
You should look into stacking, it is a wonderful tool!

I am afraid you will probably have to wait a couple of years or so before your son is old enough to develop an interest in microscopy.
Not to worry - time flies! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy using it.

Yes, no hurry, I definitely want to give photography a go . Sometimes when stargazing I wish I could to some astrophotography, but my equipment is visual only. But I want to try it with the microscope, I'm very interested in image processing. What would you say would be a good start, while keeping the budget low? On the cheap end, I've seen some eyepiece cameras, and also eyepiece cell phone adaptors. First time I looked down the stereo I knew I wanted a trinocular one, but this will have to wait.

My 6 year old son likes viewing our micro crystal (mineral) clusters under my stereo scope. His favorite is a purple amethyst. My 2 year old follows him, but I doubt the 2yo understands it.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll look into that. As a start, might try growing salt crystals (not the same thing I imagine, but it's something!).

[75RR]

A cellphone adapter like this is a cheap and very effective way to take photos.

https://www.amazon.com/WinnerEco-Cellph ... pter+mount

or a more local one:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Microscope-Te ... fi-VPq-4Dg

Eyepiece cameras are expensive, even the low resolution ones, so unless a uk based forum member has one they have outgrown I would stick with the cellphone adapter.

Link to some free stacking software:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3407&p=#p30609

[edvf]

A cellphone adapter like this is a cheap and very effective way to take photos.

https://www.amazon.com/WinnerEco-Cellph ... pter+mount

or a more local one:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Microscope-Te ... fi-VPq-4Dg

Eyepiece cameras are expensive, even the low resolution ones, so unless a uk based forum member has one they have outgrown I would stick with the cellphone adapter.

Link to some free stacking software:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3407&p=#p30609

Yeah an adapter looks like a much smaller investment . My poor moto e2 is not a big phone anyway, that might help too with the adapter.

I'll try some of the free software. At uni I studied a lot about signal processing and a bit about image processing. Now I work as a web developer, so nothing related at all with those topics, which sometimes I miss. So I may try to do some processing myself for fun, perhaps dust off old matlab .