Olympus PE 2.5x Photoeyepiece Arrived
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:40 pm
Hi all, well, the Olympus PE 2.5x photoeyepiece that I've been waiting for arrived from the U.S. this morning! As some will know, I've been using in it's place a Meiji PH 2.5 photoeyepiece with pretty good results but wanted to put the 'correct' Olympus PE into the phototube of my recently-acquired BX40.
The Meiji eyepiece was too small of diameter to fit properly and I had to cobble an elastic-band around it to 'give it a grip' inside the top of the Olympus phototube within which the photoeyepiece resides.
This worked pretty well but try as I may with different positions for the Meiji (i.e. various heights in the 'socket') aided by the grip of the elastic-band, I was unable to achieve parfocality between the objectives of the BX40 and the camera (a Canon EOS 200D DSLR)....
Here's the Meiji complete with it's grippy elastic-band, inelegant but working after a fashion...
Here are the Meiji PH and the Olympus PE side-by-side,
The Olympus sits nicely in the phototube,
The entire phototube (the camera and top-part fit atop the tube that holds the eyepiece) with camera atop looks like this,
with the eyepiece inside, at the join between the cream part and the black part,
I'm exceedingly pleased to be able to report that the Olympus PE eyepiece is perfectly parfocal, to the µ as far as I can tell, with all of the objectives in my BX40's nosepiece, i.e. the 4 UIS2 objectives and the UPlanApo objective. I'm now able to take stack images purely whilst viewing the finer image of the eyepieces through the 'scope, with confidence that the camera's 'view' is a perfect match...
A really pleasing result indeed. So, if anyone is interested in purchasing the Meiji PH 2.5x photoeyepiece just contact me, as I've no use for it now. I also use this Meiji on a Leitz Orthoplan's phototube with very good results indeed, coupled with the 'Periplan' objectives of Leitz.
Here's a 9-image stack using the Olympus PE 2.5x photoeyepiece (a total DOF thickness of about 5µ) of the slanting sieve-plate in TS from a Sunflower leaf's petiole (stalk) slide, stained with Alcian-blue stain. This is taken with the 60x UPlanapo objective, with the coverslip-correction collar set to 0.16. The holes in the sieve-plate are measured (using 'MiCam v2.4') to be about 0.5µ across.
closer-in,
This is also with the same objective and PE eyepiece, of the xylem vessels of a Sunflower petiole (leaf-stalk). The adjacent large and smaller vessels are sharing bordered-pits along their touching sides. The larger vessel to their left is showing the spiral lignification of a xylem vessel that was stretched a little (which is the purpose of the spiral thickening arrangement - it is able to stretch a little without breaking) as it was differentiated as the cells were still growing and elongating. The two vessels with the pits have continuous (lignin) walls with pits, that were formed after elongation had finished and so did not need to have spiral thickening bands - this is a good way to distinguish between later (meta-) and earlier (primary and proto-) xylem in a section. This is observedt also by their distances from the cambium-cells (2-ranks stained blue adjacent to the right-most pink-stained xylem) that created them - closer to the cambium = a later-formed cell...
As you can see, the Olympus PE 2.5x photoeyepiece is working well, thank goodness....
The Meiji eyepiece was too small of diameter to fit properly and I had to cobble an elastic-band around it to 'give it a grip' inside the top of the Olympus phototube within which the photoeyepiece resides.
This worked pretty well but try as I may with different positions for the Meiji (i.e. various heights in the 'socket') aided by the grip of the elastic-band, I was unable to achieve parfocality between the objectives of the BX40 and the camera (a Canon EOS 200D DSLR)....
Here's the Meiji complete with it's grippy elastic-band, inelegant but working after a fashion...
Here are the Meiji PH and the Olympus PE side-by-side,
The Olympus sits nicely in the phototube,
The entire phototube (the camera and top-part fit atop the tube that holds the eyepiece) with camera atop looks like this,
with the eyepiece inside, at the join between the cream part and the black part,
I'm exceedingly pleased to be able to report that the Olympus PE eyepiece is perfectly parfocal, to the µ as far as I can tell, with all of the objectives in my BX40's nosepiece, i.e. the 4 UIS2 objectives and the UPlanApo objective. I'm now able to take stack images purely whilst viewing the finer image of the eyepieces through the 'scope, with confidence that the camera's 'view' is a perfect match...
A really pleasing result indeed. So, if anyone is interested in purchasing the Meiji PH 2.5x photoeyepiece just contact me, as I've no use for it now. I also use this Meiji on a Leitz Orthoplan's phototube with very good results indeed, coupled with the 'Periplan' objectives of Leitz.
Here's a 9-image stack using the Olympus PE 2.5x photoeyepiece (a total DOF thickness of about 5µ) of the slanting sieve-plate in TS from a Sunflower leaf's petiole (stalk) slide, stained with Alcian-blue stain. This is taken with the 60x UPlanapo objective, with the coverslip-correction collar set to 0.16. The holes in the sieve-plate are measured (using 'MiCam v2.4') to be about 0.5µ across.
closer-in,
This is also with the same objective and PE eyepiece, of the xylem vessels of a Sunflower petiole (leaf-stalk). The adjacent large and smaller vessels are sharing bordered-pits along their touching sides. The larger vessel to their left is showing the spiral lignification of a xylem vessel that was stretched a little (which is the purpose of the spiral thickening arrangement - it is able to stretch a little without breaking) as it was differentiated as the cells were still growing and elongating. The two vessels with the pits have continuous (lignin) walls with pits, that were formed after elongation had finished and so did not need to have spiral thickening bands - this is a good way to distinguish between later (meta-) and earlier (primary and proto-) xylem in a section. This is observedt also by their distances from the cambium-cells (2-ranks stained blue adjacent to the right-most pink-stained xylem) that created them - closer to the cambium = a later-formed cell...
As you can see, the Olympus PE 2.5x photoeyepiece is working well, thank goodness....