How many of you mix Objective brands and sizes?

[Gatorengineer64]

Just curious as to how many people mix objectives and sizes in a given turret.

[Scarodactyl]

I use Mitutoyo, Nikon (older 45mm and newer 60mm) and Olympus objectives, plus a couple unbranded ones and occasionally an Optem. I have plenty of room for vertical adjustments with my stand because I am doing mostly reflected light work on 3d subjects so the lack of parfocality isn't too bad, though I mostly use the mitutoyos with the others acting as specialty items for higher mag, higher res work.

[PeteM]

I don't like to mix parfocal distances. Rather the opposite, I'll use adapters and parfocal shims so that an image stays more or less in focus when rotating to another objective.

There are all sorts of cases where different brands are compatible enough to mix them up. For example, since Labophot/Optiphot era Nikon finite objectives are "chrome free" something like a 20x Chinese clone is often easier to find than the genuine Nikon equivalent.

On a scope with interchangeable turrets, say an Olympus BHS or BHT, I'll sometimes make up a complete turret of other-brand (say, Leitz or Lomo water immersion objectives) and switch eyepieces. I've also had success in swapping infinity objectives, particularly ones that don't have many eyepiece corrections.

[BramHuntingNematodes]

A long time ago I thought to mix some up as I had a nice Wild lens and I also have a single nice Nikon plan fluor but I ended up never putting them on a stand as by luck I just assembled some.nice sets. Of course the Dynazoom flat field you can't mix. I have the three Leica/ B&L plan phase lenses with two Motic thick coverslip corrected plan phase on the invertoscop. They are all DIN believe. I have a single Zeiss winkel darkfield epi lens with three Zeiss epiplan HD. It is a good lens but not parfocal.

[patta]

I've used only mixed objectives of different lengths for a long while..

Then got a complete stand with its original objectives, all parfocal... WOW! That's how it is supposed to work! So much easier. Realized how much unnecessary hassle was previously, hitting the slide, refocusing, losing the sample all the time.

So now, I mix objectives only for the fun or it (fiddling with optics)
For using the microscope to observe something, now I always naturally go for the original, parfocal turret setup.
Hacking optics vs observing microbes, two different hobbies...

[MicroBob]

Hi together,
I used mixed objectives but only in parfocal condition, all with 10mm eyepieces:
Zeiss West - 160 -45 -10
Late Leitz - 160 -45 -10
Zeiss Jena - 160 -45 -13 (parcocal in stronger magnifications)
Leitz 37mm +8mm adapter -170 -37 -18 ( used with completely wrong tube length and the expected drawbacks) but: parfocal ca. 22:1 Apo oil immersion objective to go with the stronger ones!

Zeiss West made 12mm high DIC sockets for the newer 160mm DIC system. They contain a weak tube lenght correction lens and should work to adapt a 33mm objective to round about parfocality. But I haven't tried it. Leitz sold PLEZY adapters that make 37mm to 45mm with tube length correction (I should look for one of these...).

Bob

[Chris Dee]

I use mixed brand objectives on my Vickers M17 but like all of them to be parfocal. The Complan eyepieces that came with the scope work well with Zeiss and Zeiss-Jena objectives of that era. One objective (Zeiss Jena 6.3x apo) needed shimming. The 2 objective changers I have for the microscope use a mix of Zeiss and Vickers objectives, one for brightfield, the second has 2 phase and 3 oil objectives. The chinascope trinocular uses a mix of generic china plan achromats and is set up permanently for polarisation.

[Greg Howald]

I mix objectives often. There's a weirdness that I experience where an objective will do well in one scope but not in another when everything is just standard every day stuff. There's nothing special about the scopes or the objectives. Some things don't have an easy explanation. I just use what works and have really great imaging as the result. With 8 scopes I have only mounted one 100x objective, preferring 60x.
Greg

[farnsy]

I don't mix sizes, but in my current favorite scope I have objectives from Nikon, BestScope Bejing, and Radical India. They are all supposed to be Nikon compatible and they all work well together.