My old lomo

[filippomicro]

Hi to all,

I'm a passionated astrophotographer, cause of my degree in physics , and after a long relocation during these winter's days I resume my 13 years old microscope, it's a trincoular head lomo with Kohler illuminator and a bright field condenser (0,9) picture attached, I would like to upgrade to phase contrast and I discover that the KF4 kit (condenser + ocular) should be the right one. I found some used stuff on ebay coming from russia. I would like to know from the user of the group if the KF4 kit it's enough to obtain some good starting picture using this tecnique or I have to consider to buy other stuff and, if is possible, to have an idea of the quality of this microscope (at the time it was a gift from my family).

Thanks to all.

Filippo.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/filippoastro

[MicroBob]

Hi Filippo,
you've got a very nice microscope there! These later and bigger LOMOs are not very plenty on the used market, but are nice microcopes. Does your trino head have a magnification changer wheel?
I don't know what you need to get phase contrast, but maybe you can find the needed information here: http://www.mikroskopfreunde-nordhessen.de/lomo.php

Bob

[filippomicro]

Hi Bob,

thank you so much for your reply.

You are right, the trinocular head embedding a magnification changer wheel (1.1, 1.6, 2.5, B).

Taking some ideas and techniques from the forum, I will try oblique illumination since I have a swingable filter holder, in which I will put a cut light filter, swiping progressively the filter holder I expect to find the right adjustement. I will also try double polarization, I just buy some simple stuff trying to make a non intrusive modding. For the meantime, I will drop the contrast phase addon as you suggested.

I'm thinking to use my Panasonic Lumix GX80 as camera, it could make 4K at 100Mbit/s, we will see what happen.

As you can imagine this is the most creative part of the journey, cause of my quite total ignorance about microscopy .

Of course, I will put my experimentation on the forum to have some feedback.

Have a nice day.

Filippo.

[jmp]

I also have this LOMO microscope, known as Mikmed-2 or Laboroscope in the US. It is a nice microscope. You can find some info in the old LOMO US webpage stored in the web archive (wayback link here). I was lucky enough to find a new and complete phase contrast kit for it, C-PHM or KF-4M, here in the US. Phase contrast it is a really good addition to this microscope. Listings for LOMO phase condensers appear from time to time in ebay, with prices around $100 to $200 depending on the condition of the kits. You'll also find camera attachment tubes for the trinocular head on ebay, and other parts if you are patient enough; I've seen a fairly complete reflected light illuminator kit for it going for $140.

But back to the condensers, its also possible to adapt other condensers to this stand if you want to go the DIY way. Here is an example of a support for the older KF-4 phase condenser (for the BIOLAM models) that someone machined from aluminum:

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If you have access to a 3D printer, then you can try this version that I made (PM me if you want the STL files):

20200224_073733-crop (Custom).jpg (138.13 KiB) Viewed 2983 times

[filippomicro]

Hi Jmp,

thank you so much for the useful info, in the meantime I'm trying some experiments with oblique illumination and some circular polarizer filter.

Hope to publish some pictures soon.

Filippo

[Crater Eddie]

Nice looking Laboroscope. I always wanted one of these.
CE