New Lab Microscope for Imaging Blood Cells - less than $3000

[gracie]

Hello,

I am looking to upgrade my Omax scope and have always wanted to capture clear precise images and video of blood cells.
Can someone recommend scope / lighting /camera equipment that will give me what I'm after.

I'm curious as to what equipment was used to capture such amazing video/images in the links below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9va0KPrVExs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu2_kZOg6ak

Cheers.

[gekko]

Hi gracie,
Welcome to the forum. You do not show us what your Omax microscope looks like. It might well be as good or better than the microscope shown in the 1st link, and I believe will give results that are as good. Using a microscope properly is not an intuitive process. It must be learned and practiced rigorously to get good results. What I will say next may not please you (I only hope that it does not offend you)-- I apologize for that, but I have to say it. Be aware that the 2nd link appears to be designed to sell you on a concept (so-called "live blood analysis") that has no scientific basis whatsoever (pure quackery). It is pure fraud that is meant to mislead, and, in my limited experience, once someone gets to believe in it, it is very hard to convince them of the possible dangers to their health, let alone the money and time wasted in its pursuit.

[Peter]

Hi Gracie,
The video in your first link appears to have been made using a cellphone, so the equipment required may not be as exotic as you imagine. I agree with Gekko that the second video is nonsense and there is no reason to except his explanation for the artifacts he points out.
Observing live blood may be interesting, however one must remember that it is a tissue and one must use tissue culturing techniques for success; neither of the videos shows good technique or (in my opinion) successful observation.
I do not know what your interest in blood microscopy may be but if it is disease diagnostics then I think there are much more powerful methods than live blood observation.
Good luck.
Peter.

[gracie]

Hello,

Thank you for the replies. My interest in imaging blood cells is purely from an Art/Micrography/Photography perspective and not diagnose/analysis.

I am currently using an OMAX M837SL with a darkfield condenser and my Samsung S5 camera.

The person in the first video claims to be using this microscope in the link below but I am assuming its an old model because I can't find it anywhere and the video is posted in 2011.

BIM-136B (brand unknown)

http://magazin.telescop-expert.ro/micro ... -136b.html

Gracie.

[Oliver]

Hello,

My interest in imaging blood cells is purely from an Art/Micrography/Microscopy perspective and not diagnose/analysis.

OK. For your information, the second video is a textbook example of pseudoscience: it claims to be scientific, by using scientific terminology, but it is not. I wonder if the speaker actually believes in what he is saying. The "diagnosis" is called "dark field microscopy of live blood according to Enderlein" and it is quackery. There was also a discussion about this in a German Microscopy forum. Some microscope sellers were unhappy about the fact that a significant number of people bought their dark-field microscopes because they wanted to do live blood analysis......

Here is some more info:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15985779
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16862741
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005 ... th.science

Just for your info.

Oliver.

[JimT]

Gracie, your Omax should be able to image blood cells and can be upgraded to improve its performance. Two enhancements come to mind, PLAN objectives and a bright field condenser-you mention you have a dark field condensor. Something as simple as a 3MP USB camera will suffice and a DSLR with camera adopter will do an excellent job (shoot RAW).

[gekko]

Hi Gracie,
Oliver put it nicely. I'm relieved that your interest is not in live blood analysis as such, but in the artistic aspect. Thank you for the clarification. Having said that, your microscope appears to be capable of very good results (assuming that it is in good mechanical condition: especially that the focusing works well). And you have the capability of bright field and dark field illumination, as well as the possibility of adding a phase contrast kit as I understand it from the description at Microscopes.net website. My inclination, if I were you, would be to try to make full use of its capabilities, post images to this forum to get feedback if you are unhappy with the results before spending money on a much more expensive instrument. I believe that the expertise of the microscopist has at least as much to do with the quality of the images (if not more) than the quality of the microscope, so I expect your images to improve markedly as you practice and gain more experience. Others may have different opinions, which I hope they will share with us here. Ultimately you may be driven to buy a better, more expensive microscope, but by then you will know exactly what you want, rather than rely on someone else's preferences.
That is my 2-cents' worth.
P.S. I just saw that JimT posted a reply while I was writing this: I also agree with what he said.

[Peter]

Hi Gracie,
I'm just being nosy, but what art are you doing which requires videos of live blood?
Peter.

[The QCC]

Art/Micrography/Photography perspective

Gracie:

I cannot comment on the biological aspects of your microscope, but I am reasonably qualified to comment on the Art and Photography part.

I use a polarizing microscope solely for making gallery type inkjet prints and posting some to this forum. My experience has been the important part of the microscope is the camera.
Just like photographing in the macro world, the camera and lens are of prime importance.

I have used several different cameras over the years and determined the Canon line of DSLR cameras to be best suited for taking microscope photos. The Canon EOS Utility coupled with LiveView produces a 30fps live image stream. Making focusing a breeze.

If you plan on making prints from your photographs on gallery quality paper, you will need a good camera. Most consumer grade (inexpensive) microscope cameras do not fare well with a lot of editing.
I use a Canon 5D MkII on my microscope and from the RAW images I can make 16" x 24" (*) gallery prints without interpolation. If your output size is A4, you can get by with a 10-12MP camera.

From an artistic point of view, very few of my microscope images escape Vue Esprit, Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop. In most cases making the quality of the microscope optics secondary to the camera.
___________________
* I print to a Postscript Level 3 RIP at 200dpi.

[pkScary]

Hi guys,

Like the OP, I am also interested in the setup from that blood video. I was wondering - would the AmScope B-100 be able to generate a video of equal quality?

http://www.amazon.com/AmScope-B100-MS-P ... B005KUTISU

[apochronaut]

Actually, the quality of the video was not that good, principally due to the camera used. Any camera can have a degree of distortion in the corners of the field, especially if it is imaging a rather wide field of view but in the case of the first video( I couldn't bring up the second one), the field is small and the corners have extreme optical distortions of several types. That's a cheap low grade system, for sure.

[pkScary]

Actually, the quality of the video was not that good, principally due to the camera used. Any camera can have a degree of distortion in the corners of the field, especially if it is imaging a rather wide field of view but in the case of the first video( I couldn't bring up the second one), the field is small and the corners have extreme optical distortions of several types. That's a cheap low grade system, for sure.

Is that so? I guess I have low standards then, because I thought it looked great. I'd happily get a microscope with the same capabilities - the only thing I'd need to ensure is that it'd also be capable of imaging mesenchymal stem cells.

[apochronaut]

Something adapted for tissue cultures then, should suit you. That gives you lots of latitude. There are lots of excellent used, inverted microscopes around, from the various major makers, some even with higher N.A. L.W.D. optics but for only about 2 or 3 times as much, you can invest in a brand new Chinese inverted microscope, with fully achromatic objectives. They were state of the art , in one of the more recent decades. They come with a warranty. There are cameras too. They can capture 30 or 40% of the field, and with software , the image can be made reasonably flat, and partially distortion free. Get one of these up and running and you can open a clinic, providing 21st century healthcare, to the cognoscenti of alt medicine.

[lorez]

Get one of these up and running and you can open a clinic, providing 21st century healthcare, to the cognoscenti of alt medicine.

Surely, you jest...

[apochronaut]

read again. it's pretty clear what I think , I would think.

[lorez]

read again. it's pretty clear what I think , I would think.

Sorry, it got right past me.

[pkScary]

Thanks apochronaut - I have started looking for inverted microscopes. What do you think about the microscope below? It's being sold used for $500:

http://imgur.com/a/nRnvi

Description:

Research Grade Inverted microscope with 4 x 10 x 40 x and 100 x Plan Objectives and HQ 10x Olympus Eyepieces, 3 MP USB camera and built in light source and many extras.

[pkScary]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the above used inverted microscope?

[pkScary]

Hi guys,

Do you know where I could go to learn more about microscopes for imaging live organisms, especially blood cells and mesenchymal stem cells? This is not for me to get involved in LBA; it is for my research study.