Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

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carlh6902
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Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#1 Post by carlh6902 » Thu Apr 14, 2016 2:35 am

Attached is a link showing how I added a simple darkfield stop to my Olympus BH-2 scope, by using a Nikon (Labophot) abbe condenser. This also applies to Nikon scopes.

Edit 5/9/21: Replaced outdated link with a link to the master index, which always contains the latest documents.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... P4pd4whvvs

Carl
Last edited by carlh6902 on Mon May 10, 2021 2:49 am, edited 4 times in total.
--- If you're in the Kansas City area and you need help with an Olympus BH-2 scope, PM me. I love to work on these things ---

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zzffnn
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Re: Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#2 Post by zzffnn » Thu Apr 14, 2016 3:22 am

What I did was:

1) take a Nikon dovetail condenser adapter (I have seen two versions of such adapters, or you can take off the lower part of a Nikon dovetail condenser as adapter);

2) glue a dedicated oil darkfield condenser to the adapter concentrically.

Resulting images are pretty good. Darkfield works up to 97x NA 1.25 oil objective stopped down with funnel stop (to NA around 0.8-0.85), or an iris immersion objective with NA set to NA 0.9.

I have also glued a NA 1.4 condenser, and used Lego spacers to make a filter slot right above the dovetail condenser adapter.

Forum member gekko has also done something similar to what I did, with his Optiphot's dovetail condenser mount.

Yes, Olympus BH2 has a very similar condenser mount.

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Re: Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#3 Post by carlh6902 » Thu Apr 14, 2016 3:51 am

zzffnn wrote:What I did was:

1) take a Nikon dovetail condenser adapter (I have seen two versions of such adapters, or you can take off the lower part of a Nikon dovetail condenser as adapter);

2) glue a dedicated oil darkfield condenser to the adapter concentrically.

Resulting images are pretty good. Darkfield works up to 97x NA 1.25 oil objective stopped down with funnel stop (to NA around 0.8-0.85), or an iris immersion objective with NA set to NA 0.9.

I have also glued a NA 1.4 condenser, and used Lego spacers to make a filter slot right above the dovetail condenser adapter.

Forum member gekko has also done something similar to what I did, with his Optiphot's dovetail condenser mount.

Yes, Olympus BH2 has a very similar condenser mount.
I used that same dovetail adapter to add a dovetail to an earlier Olympus oil darkfield condenser (from BH maybe?). I took 1" PVC pipe and "turned it down" to the two dimensions I needed to couple the condenser to the adapter. Went together slicker than heck, and works perfectly on my BH2. I used a tablesaw to turn down the pipe to make the adapter, not a lathe.

Carl
--- If you're in the Kansas City area and you need help with an Olympus BH-2 scope, PM me. I love to work on these things ---

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Re: Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#4 Post by zzffnn » Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:04 pm

If you don't mind the look, a few pieces of Lego's and a few drops of super glue is all that is required. Painted or black PVC would look better for sure.

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Re: Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#5 Post by billben74 » Thu Apr 14, 2016 11:06 pm

Hello all this all sounds really interesting, any chance of any pictures of your lovely adpatations? (I realise carhl9062 has done this.)

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Re: Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#6 Post by Quarterbore » Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:27 pm

Moved to new thread

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Re: Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#7 Post by qanunji » Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:18 am

the link is dead.

carlh6902
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Re: Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#8 Post by carlh6902 » Mon May 10, 2021 2:49 am

Updated link
--- If you're in the Kansas City area and you need help with an Olympus BH-2 scope, PM me. I love to work on these things ---

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Re: Adding Darkfield to Nikon Dovetail Conderser - Also of Interest to Oly BH2

#9 Post by linuxusr » Mon May 10, 2021 4:45 am

Side question:

My new Zeiss scope has a dovetail ring at the base of the Abbe condenser. I see the dovetail ring indicated on my diagram but no function is mentioned in the manual . . . What is it?
Nikon AlphaPhot 2 < Zeiss Primostar 3, Full Köhler; Axiocam 208 Color < UHD LG
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