Hi all, I am relocating to the American tropics and will be using scopes to document some of my favorite life forms, including spiders with a new Dino-Lite digital scope, quite pleased with that. I am also the excited new user of a quirky scope, the Columbia FM 600, and I have noticed some members of microbe hunter.com with knowledge of this scope. This field microscope comes to me in a rather round-about way, its a long story, but through this forum I discovered that this microscope has its own detailed history documented here:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/art ... uction.pdf
I am writing to you from Boston MA, but the microscope is currently in my small lab in Costa Rica, where I will soon be relocating. I would like to use the microscope for photomicrography, and this brings us to my questions:
Through my research I have learned that most digital cameras sold for this purpose list three ocular port diameters that appear to be "standard" across many types of microscope. Those are 23mm, 30mm, and 30.5mm. The 23 mm appears to refer specifically to the camera port of many trinocular microscopes, that have a dedicated ocular for mounting a camera. The FM 600 does not have such a port. This leaves 30 mm and 30.5 mm as the two oft-cited diameters of ocular ports, correct?
QUESTION: Does anyone know the diameter of the ocular port of the Columbia FM 600? Moving overseas has its blessings, but in the process you sometimes need details on a piece of equipment that's already there, right when you have come back to wrap up more business in the homeland. Sigh...
Any guidance you can provide in my search for a compatible camera would be appreciated, starting with the correct ocular port diameter for fitting a camera.
Two more questions:
RELATED QUESTION: do you know if eyepieces of the Columbia FM 600 are difficult to remove?
GENERAL QUESTION: any general tips on buying a decent digital camera for this purpose? This AMscope product looks interesting https://www.amscope.com/1080p-wi-fi-mic ... tware.html but again, I need to know about compatibility and ease of removing the Columbia FM 600 eyepieces.
Of course the logical place to ask these questions is to the manufacturer. Unfortunately, through web searches for the company that made the scope, based in Trussville, Alabama, I have learned that this company is permanently closed.
Thank you for any guidance you can provide.