MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

For more resolution there ain't no substitute for NA. What objective and condenser are you using and how are the specimens mounted?

Not only does DIC offer no advantage over phase with birefringent optics, it offers less. The image is confused and gives little useful information, though it can be quite pretty. It's the reason DIC is rare on inverted scopes where plastic Petri dishes are commonly used. Ideally you'd use Hoffman, ...

I do have a few more of them, such as the repair manual. If there's any permanent site to store them, I'd be happy to pass 'm on. If you were to join the former Yahoo group, now called "Microscope" at groups.io, they have a sizeable storage area. I think either 1GB or 5GB. Best to pass any docs thr...

Thanks for the analysis, I do have DIC but I also like the various effects a pancratic phase condenser like the Heine can give, circular oblique for example. I'm not using phase primarily for visibility, more for special photographic effects, sometimes in crossed pols. As you say, fixed annuli can c...

Nice to find FN 25 after removing the insert. I've had a chance to test a Zeiss Pl 10x/25 in the Leica low profile and ergo heads, and I still got a clean FN 25. I don't have every intermediate attachment so couldn't test with a phototube for instance (my low profile is a trinoc). So I'm thinking th...

Got it, nice job. Might try something like that with Zeiss Pl 10x/25s as they're built the same, i.e. all the optics in the top bit. I'm inclined to use FN 25 eyepieces as I've established that the 10x/25 eyepiece image is sharp and focused edge to edge, on my newer stereos anyway (including an M651...

I don't get it... on all my Wild/Leica stereos, the correct position of any of the compound microscope eyepieces is 4mm below the lowest position they can get to... that is, if I hacked 4mm off the eyetubes they'd be fine. How do these printed adapters work?

The 445111 have no compensation for LCA and so are optically comparable with Nikon 10x/25 or 26.5, Zeiss Pl 10x/25 and in fact most 10x/25 fitted to infinity scopes, all of which apart from, I think, Leica, have any necessary LCA compensation done in the tube lens. The magnificent Leica HC Plan S 10...

I second the recommendation for 10x widefield as being the most useful magnification. However, it's not generally a good plan to use any old 10x eps from a biological compound scope, as these all sit 4mm too high for parfocal zooming to be possible. I tried it with Zeiss Pl 10x/25, with the dioptre ...

Hi all, I'm a frequent user of my Heine, modified to fit a Zeiss Universal. It's great but the design does attenuate the light somewhat, and the ring of light is pencil-thin. I've tried the Zeiss Pancratic but I don't like it because the base unit has to be changed out, and the condenser itself has ...

I wasn't really thinking in terms of inserting a sliding prism where there was none before, which would be a task I'd rather not think about. Perhaps simpler would be swapping out the eyetube sliders, but only a partial stripdown will tell if that would work. Meanwhile looking for the right part at ...

Hi all, I'm fairly keen on widefield eyepieces, e.g. 10x/25 and 10x/26.5 which are of course 30mm. I can approach the impression of widefield with 23.2mm eyepieces if they are 12.5x/20, Leitz or Zeiss as I don't think anyone else made them. 12.5x/20 gives an view angle of about 55 degrees, same as 1...

Thank you, I had never seen the "Musings" document. It's great. The difference is clearly BHS vs. BHT, or 50W vs. 100W.

Here are two BH2s with LED bar indicators that show the illuminator intensity. The indicators are set on the front bevel of the base. One consists of 5 LEDs reading 0 to 7. The other has 13 LEDs reading from 0 to 12. I'm afraid I don't know if they are one or both BHS. Also, roughly scaling by eye a...

Thanks, you are quite right, this does have a long extension above the optical section in the body. I fear the optical quality won't be up to the standards of the black Epiplan Pols, and especially the "holy trinity" of 16x/0.40, 25x/0.80 and 40x/0.90 Epiplan-Neofluar Pol oil. Wonderful they are but...

Hi all, can anyone identify this unusual (to me) Zeiss pol epi objective? I know it's epi from the "Aufl" on the barrel = auflicht = epi, and red lettering with Zeiss = pol. This one is a 100x/1.30, but I've also seen a (presumably earlier) 100x/1.25 version. In the same series are 40x/0.85 oil and ...

The tweaking is just moving the condenser up and down while looking through a phase telescope. Not every 45mm objective can be used. I need to get back here with a list of what can and what can't be used. Of course nobody says they have to be Nikon. Oly, Zeiss, Leitz could I'm sure give good results...

This might be of interest. Compare with Nikon IPC. This is the Zeiss Jena Amplival Interphako, a pretty amazing system that will do lots of cool stuff, like classical interference (Jamin-Lebedeff) as well as interference phase, DIC etc etc. The next two are Professor Pluta's easy-reading description...

Various points: Access to the BFP is what makes these systems work, so in order to use objectives with complicated lens formulas, the BFP must be moved. With non-Plan objectives the BFP can be accessed, that's why the Nikon Interference Phase System was cheaper and easier to use ; because it only wo...

Some microscopes do work in phase contrast with brightfield objectives by creating a plane inside the microscope which is conjugate with, or you might say a replica of, the aperture, BFP or pupil plane. One example is the Zeiss Axiomat where conjugate phase contrast was an option, allowing, as you s...

I've done exactly this substitution. I wanted to use Zeiss condensers on a Nikon stand. True that the Zeiss condensers are lower, or flatter, and need to be raised a bit. So here is my solution which works perfectly, an adapter with a Nikon male dovetail on the bottom and a Zeiss female dovetail on ...

I was given some Nikon-HMC objectives but no condenser. But I think the genuine Hoffman condenser is a poor design. The only fuction of the polariser is to vary the intensity of illumination in Zone 2. This makes any pol work impossible, and I assume it's simply a cheaper way of implementing the adj...

No problem, John, ask away. Try this for starters and take it from there. Remember we have a conjugate back focal plane which is freely accessible (unlike standard microscopes) and we can put there anything we want; similarly we can change the shape of the illuminating aperture in the condenser (so ...

I would be interested in hearing more about what you plan and how you might implement this on an IPC. Because I have no idea and want to learn !! By all means, when I get round to it but there are a few projects higher in priority. You will need a slider, and you could as you suggested 3D print one...

... Perhaps 2x cheap eyepiece cams in the eyetubes of a good Wild or Leica would work.... Or a 50:50 photo tube HV, a monocular, photo tube A and two mirrorless cameras, plus two sets of optic-less tube/thread adapters. Hang on, I have all the parts for that. I have way too many projects on my to-d...

Yes, I heard of an old Olympus SZ with a stereo switch but have never seen one either. As for the special Wild and Zeiss tubes, they are a cheap solution but a bit inconvenient, and I don't much rate the performance of those Zeiss Stemis, photographically at least. Perhaps 2x cheap eyepiece cams in ...

I'm wondering if anybody knows of another stereo microscope (or maybe just a phototube) which can switch the photo image source from the left optical train to the right optical train, for making stereo photo pairs. The Nikon SMZ-10 can do that, but is there any other? Or is the SMZ-10 unique in this...

I've also went through various versions of the IPC, all suffer the fading equally, but as you say, the type 5 and onward seem to fare slightly better. I'm not sure what you mean by this... do you think the Type 5 and on were differently constructed? My Type 3 and Type 5 certainly aren't equally fad...

That's really interesting, thanks. I have a type 3 bought in 1964 in Yokohama by a USN medical officer (useless as faded and crystallised, and I do mean the phase plates, not the USN medical officer) with "?" slider positions as type 4, and also a type 5 with no such problems. Maybe they changed the...

it doesn't seem too expensive. I'd rather go with the "too complicated" theory. It's not a slap on, ready out of the box thing. I believe you may be right. It comes down to "what does this thing actually do?"... the apparatus is obviously infinitely less complicated to manufacture than J-L so obvio...