First Microscope

[Matteo]

Hi All,

I have heard many varying reports about am scope.

I am about to order the following microscope
https://www.amscope.com/40x-2500x-quint ... scope.html
and camera https://www.amscope.com/9mp-high-speed- ... amera.html

This is an investment in my company and myself, and I will be doing soil microbiology via correspondence.

My use of this microscope will not be limited to the soil/ compost analysis but also include fungal microscopy and water.

The requirements state that I need an abbe condenser, given this set up which I have shared it has Kohler illumination, I have tried to research and understand the difference between the two for myself but I do not fully understand the difference, is there anything I should know before I go ahead in respect to this type of illumination and will it still be ideal for soil microbiology?

Any criticism or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

[Zuul]

The links are not working. Maybe best to just post the model number.

[PeteM]

Matteo,

The AmScope T720 is a good value for a new scope. Good enough to do serious work, but not super expensive. I would check that the phase contrast objectives are Plan Achro phase rather than Achro phase.

If you live in an area where you there is a good market (Ebay etc.) for used microscopes, the same money as a new AmScope might get you something mechanically a bit better and more readily and economically expanded to better objectives, polarization, DIC, etc. For example, moving from something like an AmScope Plan Achro to an Olympus (Nikon, etc.) Plan Fluorite objective is a noticeable step up -- and sometimes affordable on the used market.

You might want to check reviews of the specific 9mp camera. Some update very slowly if it's not a USB 3 or HDMI connection. Others shoot only a small portion of the image shown through the eyepieces. Sometimes the images just don't seem all that great, for various reasons (sensor size, pixel size, etc.). There are many other options. If you already own a good cell phone camera or a DSLR, it may be that you can get equal or better images at lower cost. Some of the dedicated astro cameras are another option.

Sounds like you're in an interesting area (soil biology). Hope you'll come back and share what you're doing and learning.

[Matteo]

Thanks for the advice I will definitely be sharing and engaging as I start to explore

[Naphthalene]

By the way, I was using for the long time the color 9MP MU900 Aptina CMOS camera for USB2.0 bought from the Amscope. In fact this is UCMOS09000KPB camera made by ToupTek, China, (as well as all other cameras sold by Amscope).
The Amscope may not confirm that information. But you can easily reveal this by looking at the device manager or be checking the factory serial number of the camera.
This is a great camera, but it has some issues with the new notebooks.
First, it does not work at all on AMD notebooks with Windows 10 . The driver is not compatible with AMD USB controller. There is no way to fix this, and I even tried using the remote access with the ToupTek technical service engineer. By the way, these guys are very nice and have spent A LOT of their time trying to make this camera work on my new AMD notebook. They did this totally for free, even despite the camera was out of the warranty period many years ago and even is not produced anymore.
And secondly, this camera has some issues with other modern notebooks, such as Lenovo L340. It gets nicely installed without issues, but when you switch on the video it causes the very significant heat generation at the USB port, accelerating the CPU fan to crazy rpms.

So if you are still choosing, and you intend to use the camera on a new Windows 10 machine, I strongly recommend you to get the USB3.0 camera. These have much higher framerate that results in smoother performance and better videos.

[Matteo]

Thanks for the heads up appreciate your thoughts and sharing this.
I am now looking at an entirely different microscope and camera with different software used by universities, made by Dewinter called Biowizard for microscopy analysis with some advanced tools.

[Naphthalene]

The best software for Image analysis is a free NCBI program ImageJ. Even Zeiss Zen Blue is inferior, let alone the others.