MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

The lens closest to the eye is a single lens. The lens furthest from the eye is a doublet.

apochronaut wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 05, 2023 10:27 am

Are you sure it is Canada Balsam?

I don't know what cement was used. It is the eyepiece from a Zeiss PM III, so mid-seventies vintage. The center is perfectly clear, but there are about a dozen semicircular incursions from the perimeter that look grainy.

So you're not dissolving the cement (canada balsam, I assume) to the point of separating the lenses, but rather just softening it and introducing some fresh cement to fill the gap, right? Does the full-body soak damage the anti-reflective coatings on the exposed faces? The lens pair in question has ...

Just had to repair an eye-piece from a first generation Axioskop. It was terribly de-laminated. There is a good chance to repair de-lamination if you are able to disassemble the item. How does one go about repairing a delaminated eyepiece? I have a Zeiss PM III with one eyepiece that has visible de...

I put enough milk to cover the bottom in each of two petri dishes. I put the probiotic powder in one dish, left the other as a control. My incubator is a cooler with a 7 W incandescent lamp for heat. It gets up to 87 °F. Within 10 hours, the control was still fluid, while the innoculated dish was co...

I bought an AmScope 2x eyepiece tube to Nikon AiS mount adapter to put my Nikon D200 on my Leitz Ortholux. It works, but I would not call it great. There is no live view, so focusing is done on the ground glass, which is pretty hard to do well. The D200 has a mirror up lock feature which reduces sha...

Just to clarify, I am trying to prove that the probiotics I am currently giving my dog are, or are not, biologically active, ie, that they are capable of forming bacterial colonies. If they are capable, then I can look elsewhere for what might be effecting my dog, if they are not capable, then I nee...

Hi all, My dog has chronic kidney disease, and takes a probiotic that is meant to help reduce uremic toxins. In the summer, I tried adding the contents of a capsule to a sample of my dog's urine. It turned cloudy within a half hour, and after an hour or so, the smell was greatly reduced, and the mic...

The Wikipedia page for the American Optical company only speaks of their eyewear, nothing of their microscopes. It talks of the company's history going back to its founders, but somehow skips the part about making microscopes for many years. Seems like an oversight that should be corrected, if anyon...

Zen Lite & µManager may be free, the optical network to PCI adapter card is not. It's also hard to find what revision PCI card works with the revision camera I have (r2.0). I wrote to Zeiss and got a reply from a local rep: No longer supported, PCI card no longer available, existing PCI cards will n...

An update: I tried an aftermarket 12 VDC, center-positive, 5.5 mm x 2.5 mm power supply. The status LED lights up, and after a few minutes, the body gets a little warm, which probably means that the Peltier cooling works. I had looked into finding AxioVision software and drivers for the camera. Zeis...

A good first step is to apply power and see if the camera at least makes the LED glow. I know a glowing LED does not mean a functional camera, but a non-glowing LED means a non-functional camera, which makes further work unnecessary. The installation instructions specify the power supply as 12 VDC, ...

I hope you’ll be able to find what you desire. Anything particular you are looking for? In 2007, I bought a Leitz Ortholux that was missing the spring-loaded slide holder. I used one from another microscope, but since the stationary part of the slide holder has a longer stand-off, I needed to epoxy...

I hope you’ll be able to find what you desire. Anything particular you are looking for? Small parts are frequently the first lost, broken, or abandoned in a box of parts kept in the back of the bottom shelf of the stores room. I bought a Leitz Heine phase contrast condenser off ebay which of course...

As I understand it, Google, as with other web search tools, dowloads a page, finds the URLs therein, follows those URLs and repeats to the en∂ - a web crawler. So for Google to have found the documents it did, it must have found a link somewhere, at some time. If there is currently a page with links...

Hi all, Zeiss.com has some old documentation, but doesn't really provide a way of finding it. For example, the manual for the Photomicroscope II can be found at: https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/Microscopy/us/download/pdf/end-of-service/upright/upright-photomicroscope.pdf though I only found the li...

A skimpy Google search has brought the name Henry Pinkard (@henrypinkard) (allegedly - for a device driver for old Axiocams) and the software micro-manager (unknown to me). I had seen that earlier. I wasn't sure if this driver is for the µManager - to - Zeiss optical PCI card interface, or for the ...

From the installation instructions I learned that the HRc's electrical connector is for an external shutter, so not something I can use as an alternate data connection: "Via a supplementary cable the AxioCam HR offers a TTL control pulse, which can be used, for example, to control a mechanical shutt...

Garden variety wood slivers are best served by a loupe, but there are hair-fine things that come from burdock or some other weed that cause a surprising amount of pain for their size. Barely visible with naked-eye darkfield, but pretty obvious under a disecting scope. Using tweezers under a microsco...

For what practical applications have you used microscopy? I'll start: To see if that thing in the refrigerator has gone bad: milk, lunch meat, etc. I have been surprised to find that many things that smell fine are, in fact, a biohazard. To see if the stuff I fermented is bad. I make sauerkraut. If ...

From notes I've accumulated: Cell Fractionation Based On Density Gradient https://user.eng.umd.edu/~nsw/ench485/lab10.htm Determination of the Specific Gravity of Certain Helminth Eggs Using Sucrose Density Gradient Centrifugation https://www.jstor.org/stable/3281005 Separation of Cryptosporidium Oo...

Iodine in solution is the familiar brown or amber color. The iodide ion is colorless. Iodine is an oxidizer, meaning it will take an electron from anything willing to offer one, an become iodide. Lugol's solution is iodine & KI in water. None of those is a willing electron donor, so my bet would be ...

Get a PCI card and firewire from Amazon or elsewhere online. It shouldn't cost more than 30-50 USD. Zen lite is sufficient, you'll have to fiddle around with the right drivers but everything you need should be available online. I found myself in possession of a similar Zeiss camera last year and it...

I've always found the live action to be better than a video. Rotifers are particularly fun to watch. Then there's algae that looks like swimming cage balls, things that go rotten in the fridge, pus, etc. On the practical side, I've looked at milk that smelled perfectly fine, but when viewed under th...

Wonderful intro. You mention acquiring a surplus microscope from a nearby hospital and a few from a school lab. How are you doing this, cold-calling them, or do you have some connections to these places? Most universities have surplus equipment web pages nowadays. As one who likes older microscopes,...

Hi all, I bought a used Zeiss Photomicroscope III, which came with an AxioCam HRc CCD camera head, but no PCI adapter card nor software required to make it work. Is it worth the bother fishing around for a PCI card and software, or are there other alternatives as good or better that won't break the ...

HI all, I have a Zeiss PM III, which appears to have a PM II condenser carrier, ie. the centering screws point diagonally to the rear, and there is a spring-loaded pin in the front. That pin assembly is a knurled cap screw with an axial hole facing the user, through which, I assume, the pin slides, ...

Hi all, I've been doing amateur microscopy on and off for about 17 years. My current daily driver is a 1962 Leitz Ortholux with Phaco phase contrast. I also have a Zeiss Photomicroscope III that I am in the process of setting up, and will probably ask those on this board questions about, like how to...