Improvement of a microscope or buying a new one?

[microscopybegins]

I am doing my Master's Thesis in the production of structures and films and I would like to see structures ranging from nanometers to a few micrometers.
In the classroom, there is a Nikon microscope, which, although being of excellent quality, has a 100x broken lens, so it can only enlarge up to 400x in total (40x with the highest magnification and 10x with the eyepiece).

This microscope has attached an old analog roller camera and my teacher bought a Dino-Eye Digital Eye Piece Camera a few years ago. The camera is 30 mm or 30.5 mm in diameter, but I can't get it into the eyepiece, because I think it has the same diameter as the camera and I didn't find any adapter.
The microscope and the camera are shown in the photos.

I was also researching new microscopes and cameras on Amazon and these two microscopes and the following camera (which can be 10 megapixels or 18 megapixels) caught my attention:

https://www.amazon.es/SWIFT-Microscopio ... merReviews

https://www.amazon.es/Bresser-Researche ... 168&sr=8-5

https://www.amazon.es/SWIFT-microscopio ... =8-12&th=1

I intend to spend as little as possible, have the best image quality and have a greater likelihood that the pieces will adapt to each other.

I don't know what will be better: if I buy a new microscope + camera or if I improve the classroom microscope. What do you advise? If you choose to improve the microscope in the room, what type of camera can I buy within these values and that fits 100% in the microscope?

If you choose to buy a new microscope + camera, would you advise the instruments I put the links on? Do you think they are good and would I get an image similar to the one I get with Nikon? And between the Swift microscope or Bresser, which would you advise? Do you think the Bresser microscope would be able to incorporate that 10 or 18 megapixel camera?

[apochronaut]

The eyepiece camera is for a 30mm ocular tube. Your ocular tubes are 23.2mm. Is it exchangeable for the correct size?
You can buy a replacement objective quite cheaply. It makes more sense than buying a cheap microscope on-line that will have inferior optics to what you have now.

The eyepiece camera you already have, if you cannot exchange it, can be cheaply adapted to work in your trinocular head. Parts are available on-line to adapt your trinocular to a 30mm tube the eyepiece camera can be dropped into. It is definitely a d.i.y. project and depends a good deal on your and your teacher's capabilities but that is your cheapest option.

I don't know that camera but it is unlikely to give you as good results as the 35mm rollfilm camera , however the cumbersomeness of an emmulsion film camera is very limiting. Another option would be to buy an inexpensive mirrorless camera back to replace the rollfilm back. Adapting to another mount would not be that big a deal but the camera back would cost , likely 2 to 300.00., possibly less.
What is the mount on that old FX camera back. Is it a standard Nikon bayonet?

[Hobbyst46]

First, sub micrometer structures are not really visible with an ordinary optical microscopes, even with a 100X objective. They can be observed with electron microscopy (SEM). Perhaps, depending on the building material, can be studied with optical super-resolution microscopy, there are many variants of that.

Second, you microscope (Nikon Optiphot I think) is a good one in principle. The part within the yellow box - film camera and adapter - should be removed. Did you try to fit the eyepiece camera ( without 30mm adapter) into the vertical phototube of the adapter ?

According to the "Characteristics of product" of the Dyno camera, it should fit within an 23mm ID photo tube as you have on the scope.

[PeteM]

A few more thoughts.

That looks to be a reflected light only microscope. Fine for many structures. From the photos -- I'm not sure it has a lower lamp and condenser? I see a slide on the stage and a transmitted type stage, but (from the pictures provided) am not sure there is a lamp house (or place for the lamp house) at the bottom, a field lens, and a condenser? Let us know.

Second, specimens need to be in a very flat plane to be observed at higher powers. You can probably buy a 100x Nikon BF/DF objective for that microscope under $100 - but I'd start by imaging with your next highest objective (50x?).

Third, as Hobbyist said, if you have access to a DSLR camera that has or can be adapted to a Nikon mount, you could take off the old film camera, pull out the internal guts except the photo relay eyepiece that should be inside, and use that.

Fourth, the camera adapter you have probably has 30mm and 30.5mm sleeves. If you take those off it should insert in place of one of the two eyepeices when you want to take a picture.

What specifically do you want to see in terms of specimens? If it's fibers, minerals, diatoms etc. - they can benefit from different imaging methods.

[microscopybegins]

Hello everyone! Thank you for your answers. I'm a beginner. I wanted a solution that would be the easiest to do and give me some guarantees that it is compatible with the Nikon microscope. I think I will follow your advice and use the Nikon microscope instead of buying a cheap one from Amazon with low optics. This microscope does not have a lamp at the bottom, nor a condenser. The light comes out of the black box that is attached to a tube, as you can see from the photos in the post. I wanted the images to appear with the scale, which does not appear if using a DSLR camera. The goal is not only to do the thesis, but also research work. I intend to see thin films created in Silicon and oxidized Silicon wafers and the structures that will give rise to these films. The structures are deposited by CVD. For this, I think I do not need the 100x lens (which is damaged) because I am not going to use immersion oil. I just need to be able to extract some images to put in the thesis and in the research work. If I buy the 10 or 18 megapixel camera that has a better resolution than the laboratory camera, would there be any way to fit it under the Nikon microscope? How could I do that? Do I have to buy any additional parts?

Attached I put an image to get an idea of the size of the structures I am observing. The image was taken with the iPhone 6s and the 40x objective lens (using a 10x eyepiece), but unfortunately it does not show the scale of the image:

118699647_984517551972421_5161093753577777047_n (1).jpg (110.18 KiB) Viewed 1886 times