My silly quest for : 'poor mans DIC'.

[charlie g]

Recently, coominya and 75RR posted into a thread: "The essence of DIC" with great links. In these links,and other microscopy portals...it encouraged me to set up a pol contrast/Kholer illumination light path...and then to add the substage, and the objective lens Normarski prisms.

My mission is to play the variety of orientations of the two pol-filters, and then try a variety of substage prism orientations with respect to the objective prism.

A totally separate issue is my 'lousy' image capture method with the trinoc vertical port of the Olympus stand. I need better control of the illumination...of course visually the test subjects look better than my image captures!

Radiolaria skeletons are so huge, compared to diatoms as a test subject for the 40X objective I am using for this 'attempt to develop DIC contrast'. This project needs a lot more attention before I post to forum images and questions, again, thank you all kind and sharing DIC forum microscopists. Charlie guevara

[charlie g]

So I need to try a variety of substage prism orientations...perhaps use diatom frustules, rather than these huge Radiolaria skeletons. Thanks for your patience..and please opine on the prism orientations, and the pol-filter orientations. Charlie Guevara..I need to purchase a DIC microscope when the seller upgrades to a better stand.

[billbillt]

Hi Charlie,

I don't see this as silly at all.. You have a great potential in achieving your desired results with what you posted here.. Please keep us informed and good luck...

The Best,
BillT

[coominya]

Well beyond me, I'm just a black box operator at this stage but keep us posted on what comes out of the EP. I found a DIC kit for my olympus imt-2 going for a grand and a half (they are generally 6 grand) but it was an Indonesian company that accepts only wire transfers or cash, no CC or paypal so I figured it's a scam. Their website has only been up for 6 months as well, a construction company.

Your olympus looks a lot like mine, an old ECE from the late 1960's. I love the quality of it, everything is so well machined compared to modern microscopes I have looked at in the student range. So glad I bought it.