Hi there Bill! I know - I really should have posted some images by now.
Here are a few images of the new BX40 - and when I say new, of course it's a 90s 'scope but actually hadn't so much as a fingerprint upon it - looked unused, or virtually-so.....
The BX40 I now have with Canon 200D atop.
Various views around the beauty...
A few quick images through 'scope with Canon DSLR and Canon's 'Utility v3' tethering software.
An epidermal-peel I took today while preparing some pieces of Foxglove stem (and ovaries as it happens) for fixative (should make a nice set of slides I think) simply water-mounted with coverslip, brightfield.
I like the way this stack has enabled the focus to move into the interior of the stomatal-pore somewhat, very nice detail for a water-mount, nice and clear. So far so good...
A stomate from the epidermis of a Daffodil ovary TS - again nice detail for a single image, especially of the continuation of the epidermal cuticle around the 'doors' of the pore. Rather nice detail also of cytoskeleton and vacuoles within cells. Stained with Alcian-blue and Safranin.
I
think these are
Teliospores of rust-fungus, beneath the epidermis of Sonchus.arvensis.
This is 40x phase-contrast at ludicrously-high ISO (the std 30W halogen barely manages especially with the use (as here) of a green filter, image in mono with camera. Stained slides aren't much use (nor are they intended to be of course) with phase-contrast, but all my current slides are stained... This is part of the vascular bundle (xylem vessels) of a Sonchus.oleraceus in TS.
Here is the same in brightfield, far better as expected.... Above the xylem is a 2-3 cell thick cambium and above that the phloem vessels and their companion cells (which 'load' sugars and other substances into and out of the phloem tubes).
LS along xylem vessels. The central vessel is a mature secondary vessel-element and shows typical 'bordered' (elliptical-elongate) pits in the (dead) secondary cell-walls. These vessels are formed after cell-elongation has finished as their rigid structure would cause them to fracture if they were formed earlier, during primary growth. The vessel-walls formed during primary growth need to be able to accommodate cell elongation stages and so will have helical or circular (lignin) bands that fulfil this requirement - a readily observable character that allows identification of primary vs secondary xylem.... The vessel that has been torn by the microtome knife, to the left of the bordered pitted vessel, is such a vessel with helical lignification...
Oh yes, here's a rudimentary darkfield image of the aforementioned epidermal-peel (of a Foxglove stem) as provided by the 'DF' position of the BX40's phase contrast condenser. Not the best but definitely of use....
That's about all I had time to put together this evening.
I love this BX40's clarity and sheer resolution of detail. I have a nice-looking (oh-my I really hope so......) UPlanApo DRY 60x 0.9 n.a. with correction-collar infinity objective arriving tomorrow which will hopefully serve me well as my 'high-dry' go-to before the dreaded 100x oil is needed. I'm hoping the correction-collar will help this objective to perform to it's best as the 60x dry objectives are horribly sensitive without one..... Fingers very firmly crossed - I'll post images when I get it up & running.....
More tomorrow hopefully....
John B.