MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Could always just go pick up one of these:

https://microscopecentral.com/products/ ... kfield-dic

I mean, if you win the lottery or something, heh.

Tony, I don't know how epi-darkfield works on the Olympus, but on my Zeiss Universal it's my usual choice for opaque subjects. For most natural subjects like plants and rocks it is more like Lieberkühn - just a nice, very diffuse top light - but you get a true darkfield effect on subjects like coin...

I've got 3 different types. They all seem to produce about the same quality of image, but I like the latter two best since the prism can be completely removed from the path to use darkfield, pol or brightfield with a quick flip or slide. The former style only allows translation of the prism, althoug...

Yes, with metal it is very strong. Here is an example of a razors edge I've posted before. This is a Feather razor blade with a very highly finished bevel. Under regular brightfield or pol the surface texture of the last portion of the bevel is not visible. Under DIC it is plainly visible. https://i...

My Vanox AH2 uses the same EPI lenses and such as the BH2, it has a built in 100W halogen illuminator. I generally don't have any issue at all getting enough illumination except for darkfield at very high magnification sometimes. What is your subject? AH2 is a nice system, it's the best module amon...

My Vanox AH2 uses the same EPI lenses and such as the BH2, it has a built in 100W halogen illuminator. I generally don't have any issue at all getting enough illumination except for darkfield at very high magnification sometimes. What is your subject?

Here are a couple to compare with, both are EPI DIC of cheek cells. One with a cover slip and one without. (EPI does not generally work great with a cover slip). The non cover slip is dried out from evaporation. Without cover slip, 50x objective https://i.imgur.com/pLTGYlJ.jpg With cover slip, 50x o...

Your 1A and 1B images already have cheek cells. The ones that look sort of like a fried egg. And yes I would say you're getting DIC in 1B - cheek cells show it pretty well.

Very nice grab. I picked up a BX40 with U-URA and a bunch of spares for an embarrassing price about 6 months ago, somebody was going to toss it in a dumpster while doing a cleanout of a business that went under and abandoned all their property.

I just ran into another Olympus epi prism that someone had lying around, it's a bit different style. It's got a colored number on it and has a slider instead of the flip-out mechanism for the prism, but the prism can be slid all the way out to use brightfield and darkfield. There are a couple comple...

Some allow you to remove the prisms from the path completely, others just translate the prism but don't remove it. The threads for brightfield only objectives are usually but not always RMS, but always smaller than the BD. Brightfield/darkfield are the big ones.

I have had about as much luck trying to find more specific documentation for the Olympus Vanox DIC stuff. It has to be out there somewhere, but I sure can't find it. Reflected light Nomarski: http://alanwood.net/downloads/olympus-vanox-ah3-naf-ah3-nsf-ah3-anf-instructions.pdf The BH2 Nomarski DIC g...

I would love to see some before/after images if you have any. I'm thinking about trying to re-do the black parts of a few of my epi lenses and other bits in the light path. My brightfield images are looking a bit washed out.

I have had about as much luck trying to find more specific documentation for the Olympus Vanox DIC stuff. It has to be out there somewhere, but I sure can't find it.

Nice one!

This has been sold.

The wall hanging almost looks to be a display case full of grinding wheels and sharpening stones. Was your father in a machine shop related area?

I happened to have a silicon chip lying around that I was looking at the other day and noticed Scaro's image from page 2 of the same subject. Here are the two next to each other at about the same scale. This is a T-2 prism at 50x for my image and a T-4 at 50x for his image. https://i.imgur.com/NwK3O...

So after some more playing around I think that the prisms with T-2 seem to be akin to the modern "HR," or high resolution, and the T-4 seem more akin to "HC," or high contrast. The T-2 prisms reflected off a mirror change the color of the entire field of view at once when the prism is translated, wh...

Hmm, it does on my setup, but only after they've moved a bit. I can watch things move and shift while the prism is translated. Translating the prism on my setup shifts which side of the transitions are light or dark, so the images don't exactly line up. As that fringe leaves center it shifts things ...

I'm not sure what subjects would make good "sharp angle" candidates. I don't really have any diamonds floating around. Scaro, what magnification were you using? And did you check the fringe patterns of your prisms to be sure they were centered? I've found that it is actually pretty easy to see if th...

So this one was pretty cool. Edge damage on a razor blade. The width of the "crater" is about 230μ. This resized version isn't as sharp as the larger file, that looks a lot better.

Yeah, it was more of an example of where I pretty much couldn't make heads or tails of the item without the DIC. That first DIC image was over toward the edge of the hologram where there was no picture. Here is another spot in DIC a little more toward the middle that shows some of the etching or wha...

I was playing around today and made a quick few images of the same subject (a holographic image from the back of an old debit card) under different EPI illumination methods. Pretty interesting material. Thought some might find it interesting. 20210824_144221.jpg 20210824_144122.jpg 20210824_144147.j...

Thanks Pete, I will dig around a little. I had some contact with an Olympus rep, maybe I will try rattling his cage too. It would be nice to find out once and for all what the "T-2" "T-4" etc. mean in reality. Scarodactyl were you using a tint plate in your images? I mostly don't get any color at al...

Yeah that is no joke. DIC is pretty darn cool. I am absolutely planning on getting a better imaging setup so I can do some stacking. I noticed that one of the prisms is just a smidge off from where I'd like it to be for the best contrast, do any of you guys know of any documentation as far as setup ...

Got some prisms on loan, first crack with them tonight. Tried a razor edge for these images. Don't have a good camera set up yet, these were just through the eyepiece. The bottom looks like it may have some of the doubling, but that was taken with the prism shifted off center to get some color. With...

I wish there was an easy way to do the reverse and mount a BH2 pol stage onto a BX. But an adapter would lift it up 7mm and the condenser might no reach anymore. Not certain. No it would not. However a ring could be made to lift the condenser up, but may not be worth it depending on how you use the...

How about stage rotation? Did you try that too? One of the pages I read somewhere mentioned that major artifacting can be introduced at certain angles to the prism. There were some sample images that showed a specimen in sharp detail and then others with the stage slightly rotated in which the speci...