Apochromat virgin.

[Rossf]

Never had any Apochromat quality objectives and kinda thought “they can’t be that much better can they?”-well I caught 4 Olympus short barrel Apos from a nice Japanese seller for really good price-(10x,20x,40x,60x (fluorite) I put them on my old Nikon S (still in process of getting better upright) and boy even for late 60’s early 70’s Apo objectives these are seriously sharper than anything else I’ve had-rich colours-really makes cilia very clear and even bacteria much more defined-and all that glass really tames the bright white background so less eye strain. The later long barrel Olympus are still out of my budget by a long shot but I’m pretty pleased with these vintage glass...

[MichaelG.]

Very nice !!
... Enjoy them.

MichaelG.

[Larry060]

Looks really nice Rossf!

[apochronaut]

Part of the improvement is not necessarily due to their apochromat design, it is simply due to the higher N.A. that apochromat designs can achieve. Higher N.A. objectives that do not have a designation as apochromat, usually have achieved that due to the utilization of similar low dispersion glass types and are heading towards being a fluorite type , if not technically marked as such. These can have a marked improvement over achromats as well. The tradeoff? Shorter working distances, usually. This means that the smaple prep needs to be more immaculate and it helps if the slides and coverslips are of better quality too.

[Rossf]

Yes I noticed how close these have to be to the slide coverslip. I’m waiting on an achromat/aplamat oblique condenser-will be interesting how that improves things as well mainly for photography.
Cheers