ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

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Narogen
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ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#1 Post by Narogen » Sun Feb 14, 2021 3:12 pm

Hello everyone! I have been looking for a microscope for a long while now and finally found a second-hand one for a good price of only £100 (138 USD); the original price was a few thousand Australian dollars. It is made by the “Industrial & Scientific Supply Co.” from Australia and the model is BM-4DF. The microscope was designed for live blood analysis.

https://imgur.com/gallery/Rhv0SuF

It has a number of quirks - It is fitted with a seidentopf trinocular head (with a C-mount for a camera) inside of which is a rotating disk that can provide an extra magnification of x1, x1.1, x1.6 and x2.5. It has a xenon bulb lighting system with a diaphragm built into the base.

https://imgur.com/gallery/kk5mCzC
https://imgur.com/gallery/j7AkgZZ

It is fitted with an oil immersion darkfield condenser - I have only worked with the little black disks you place into normal abbe condensers before, perhaps someone could explain the difference between these? Nonetheless, the image quality is noticeably better than with the standard dry-type darkfield setup.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6d0i0AL

It is fitted with x10 and x40 dry objectives and with a x100 oil immersion objective. However, the x100 objective has an in-built diaphragm that is controlled via a small rotating metal ring on the outside of it - what would be the correct way to utilise it?

https://imgur.com/gallery/m3jhg8h

Looking forward to any comments anyone may have.

quantum
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Re: ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#2 Post by quantum » Sun Feb 14, 2021 4:32 pm

I look forward to reading what others (who know more than me) say about the specific stuff pictured. But regardless, I say that if you experience any buyer's remorse, just let me know and I'll take it off your hands for $138USD. :)

I suspect that the trinocular port was specifically for use with a video camera. The live-blood analysis stuff was perhaps a bit dodgy. The idea was that they would put a drop of your blood on a slide, image it in darkfield out to a video camera, and the patient would see the live images and be told what dietary supplements he needed to purchase right then. No doubt the variable-magnification on the trinoc port made it easier to bedazzle the mark (patient) because you could quickly change the image without having to go messing with the objectives and focusing and things like that.

But imaging blood well is not actually trivial, so I would think that a scope designed for this purpose would be interesting to play with, and would probably be a very nice dedicated darkfield scope. Certainly worth $138 to try!

apochronaut
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Re: ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#3 Post by apochronaut » Mon Feb 15, 2021 1:30 pm

The microscope itself is a Lomo, I think. Probably one of the latter D.I.N. 160mm tube models. Should be a terrific microscope. You would have some optics choices for the future and if it turned out to have a 43mm or so dovetail, you might be able to find a PZO interference set, cheap enough to turn it into a DIC scope. The microscope itself looks a bit PZOish. The Russians did a lot of copying. Putin has the former PZO factory in his basement, at his house on the black sea right now.
A dedicated oil DF condenser is far superior to DF stops. With DF stops, your condenser quality determines the image quality, so a cheap abbe condenser cannot provide a quality colour corrected DF image. The DF oil condensers are more highly achromatic, provide superior centering and are useful at high resolution. The microscope has a high wattage illuminator and is capable of illuminating a 100X objective.

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Crater Eddie
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Re: ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#4 Post by Crater Eddie » Mon Feb 15, 2021 5:37 pm

Agree with Apo above about it looking LOMO. The trinocular viewing head looks just like one of mine.
CE
Olympus BH-2 / BHTU
LOMO BIOLAM L-2-2
LOMO POLAM L-213 / BIOLAM L-211 hybrid
LOMO Multiscope (Biolam)
Cameras: Canon T3i, Olympus E-P1 MFT, Amscope 3mp USB

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Dmi3n
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Re: ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#5 Post by Dmi3n » Fri May 14, 2021 1:34 pm

Yeah, this is LOMO МФН-11 (MFN-11) trinocular head and ОИ-13 (OI-13) darkfield oil immersion condenser. The stand, however, looks like some no-name Chinese scope. Pretty good price, even in Russia that trinocular alone goes for around 100$.
Gear list:
CZJ NfPk and Polmi A w/ 45mm apo objectives, Phv, Epi Pol, trinocular
Gamma Hungary 3D-condenser
LOMO ОИ-28 Fluorescence Attachment
Set of Leitz Photar macro lens
Nikon D500 DSLR
LOMO МС-2 microtome

farnsy
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Re: ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#6 Post by farnsy » Mon May 17, 2021 5:59 am

That variable magnification built in to the head seems like a cool idea. I wish more stuff was built-in to microscopes and less stuff was interchangeable. I don't want to be swapping out eyepieces, but I wouldn't mind getting a little zoom in from time to time.

Narogen
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Re: ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#7 Post by Narogen » Wed May 19, 2021 9:16 pm

That variable magnification built in to the head seems like a cool idea
Having used the microscope extensively over the past few months I can certainly say that the variable magnification feature is absolutely excellent. Allows for a much more varied range of magnifications and its very convinient to use. Shame that it isn't an industry standard.

GeekyWife
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Re: ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#8 Post by GeekyWife » Thu May 20, 2021 2:29 pm

Narogen wrote:
Sun Feb 14, 2021 3:12 pm
It is fitted with an oil immersion darkfield condenser - I have only worked with the little black disks you place into normal abbe condensers before, perhaps someone could explain the difference between these? Nonetheless, the image quality is noticeably better than with the standard dry-type darkfield setup.

It is fitted with x10 and x40 dry objectives and with a x100 oil immersion objective. However, the x100 objective has an in-built diaphragm that is controlled via a small rotating metal ring on the outside of it - what would be the correct way to utilise it?
The diaphragm on the 100X objective is there to restore dark field contrast at high numerical aperture. You normally want it wide open for brightfield, but may need to reduce the diphgragm aperture to reduce glare on darkfield and keep the background dark.

Amscope has a good basic video tutorial on darkfield that covers this. It is not Amscope-specific, and will apply to your microscope. It's worth watching the whole 6-minute video, but your specific question will be answered and the use of the objective diaphragm demonstrated just past the 2 minute mark.

Darkfield tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw557w421is&t=195s

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Dmi3n
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Location: Russia, Kaliningrad

Re: ISSCO BM-4DF microscope for live blood analysis

#9 Post by Dmi3n » Fri May 21, 2021 11:41 am

Narogen wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 9:16 pm
That variable magnification built in to the head seems like a cool idea
Having used the microscope extensively over the past few months I can certainly say that the variable magnification feature is absolutely excellent. Allows for a much more varied range of magnifications and its very convinient to use. Shame that it isn't an industry standard.
All Soviet research microscopes since 1960s had either MFN-11 trinocular used here or AU-26 binocular head with the same optovar design. So it was kind of standard. The downside is that it's rather hard to manufacture such system for modern wide-field lens, but Soviet microscopes didn't have even 20mm FOV eyepieces so it wasn't a problem.
Gear list:
CZJ NfPk and Polmi A w/ 45mm apo objectives, Phv, Epi Pol, trinocular
Gamma Hungary 3D-condenser
LOMO ОИ-28 Fluorescence Attachment
Set of Leitz Photar macro lens
Nikon D500 DSLR
LOMO МС-2 microtome

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