American Optical Series 15

What equipment do you use? Post pictures and descriptions of your microscope(s) here!
Post Reply
Message
Author
dtsh
Posts: 977
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 6:06 pm
Location: Wisconsin

American Optical Series 15

#1 Post by dtsh » Tue Jun 07, 2022 3:33 am

I've been slowly assembling a finite scope. I was previously using an AO Series 35, but I acquired a scope for it's objectives and found them attached to a binocular Series 15. The 35 and 15 are design wise pretty similar in appearance and both are 34mm parfocal 160mm tube length mcroscopes; where the 15 differs is in a changeable head which fits onto a dovetail. For viewing I prefer a binocular microscope, but for imaging if I can't have a trinocular a monocular is just as good, so I started to keep an eye out for a monocular Series 15.

Here's the Series 15 with the bino head.
AO15_1.jpg
AO15_1.jpg (126.45 KiB) Viewed 1851 times
Another shot with the monocular head.
AO15_2.jpg
AO15_2.jpg (106.37 KiB) Viewed 1851 times
And a shot with neither attached
AO15_3.jpg
AO15_3.jpg (116.05 KiB) Viewed 1851 times
The illuminator is the AO Cat.385 bakelite with a rather anemic 15w bulb; thankfully I have a mirror and a 100w Cat.370 remote illuminator.
A few shots of the Cat.385 in case anyone is curious.
AO15_4.jpg
AO15_4.jpg (95 KiB) Viewed 1851 times
AO15_5.jpg
AO15_5.jpg (115.29 KiB) Viewed 1851 times
The various white labels are tags which were added by a previous owner with their name and institution.
Images when I get around to hooking up the camera.

It came with the monocular head and with 5x, 10x, 43x, and 97x objectives and what I am pretty sure are two Huygenian eyepieces, a 5x and a 10x.
Last edited by dtsh on Sun Jun 19, 2022 4:50 am, edited 3 times in total.

apochronaut
Posts: 6233
Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 12:15 am

Re: American Optical Series 15

#2 Post by apochronaut » Tue Jun 07, 2022 8:36 am

It was standard procedure prior to the development and widespread use of the trinocular head to swap in a monocular for photos. The camera was on a dedicated photo stand which had a platform that aligned the microscope to it. Loosen one knob, remove the binocular, replace with the photo tube, tighten knob , meter it, set the shutter and expose. Some systems had a beamsplitter and a viewing port.

dtsh
Posts: 977
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 6:06 pm
Location: Wisconsin

Re: American Optical Series 15

#3 Post by dtsh » Tue Jun 07, 2022 2:48 pm

Here's a crop of the back page of the catalog that came with the scope showing one of AO's camera setups for imaging with these scopes.
AO_camera_adapter.jpg
AO_camera_adapter.jpg (105.34 KiB) Viewed 1796 times

dtsh
Posts: 977
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 6:06 pm
Location: Wisconsin

Re: American Optical Series 15

#4 Post by dtsh » Mon Jun 13, 2022 11:11 pm

I finally got around to making an adapter, first image is a stack of 16 images, 4um apart. 10x objective, a flea from a woodchuck.
AO15_woodchuck_flea_10x.jpg
AO15_woodchuck_flea_10x.jpg (87.4 KiB) Viewed 1708 times

dtsh
Posts: 977
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 6:06 pm
Location: Wisconsin

Re: American Optical Series 15

#5 Post by dtsh » Thu Jun 16, 2022 11:51 pm

I like having a 20x, so I removed the 97x oil and put one in.
I'm not sure if there's some magic incantation I am missing in my stacking tools, but non-plan objectives are so much harder to stack and seem to require more images at finer distances.
22 images at 2um focus.
AO15_woodchuck_flea_20x.jpg
AO15_woodchuck_flea_20x.jpg (64.36 KiB) Viewed 1614 times
This second image is a selection from the middle of the stack, single image unstacked for comparison.
AO15_woodchuck_flea_20x_nostack.jpg
AO15_woodchuck_flea_20x_nostack.jpg (60.08 KiB) Viewed 1613 times

dtsh
Posts: 977
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 6:06 pm
Location: Wisconsin

Re: American Optical Series 15

#6 Post by dtsh » Sun Jun 19, 2022 4:30 am

I was asked privately what the label said and if I typically left them in place.
This particular label goes along with a bit of engraving on the microscope, so removing the label doesn't "fix" the etching/scratching/marring/engraving. Typically, when they're just routine "This is property of XYZ institution" I'll clean them off, but this particular label reads:

James Colton Allen, M.D.
Department Ophthalmology
University Hospitals
Madison, Wisconsin 53706

Much of the kit is thus labelled, the upright case, the illuminator, and his name was written on the copy of "The Effective Use and Proper Care of the Light Microscope", the catalog, etc.


So out of curiosity I undertook a search to see if I could figure out who this person is, or was, the later being the correct tense. It seems Dr Allen was an accomplished individual. The labels aren't hurting anything, so I have chosen to leave them be.
Series15_Allen3.jpg
Series15_Allen3.jpg (136.91 KiB) Viewed 1534 times
Series15_Allen2.jpg
Series15_Allen2.jpg (145.53 KiB) Viewed 1534 times
A few links about Dr Allen for those curious as I was.
https://www.ophth.wisc.edu/blog/2020/01 ... -possible/

http://www.wnpj.org/node/5380

https://wmjonline.org/wp-content/upload ... /4/164.pdf

https://captimes.com/news/opinion/colum ... 4b278.html
Last edited by dtsh on Sun Jun 19, 2022 4:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

dtsh
Posts: 977
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 6:06 pm
Location: Wisconsin

Re: American Optical Series 15

#7 Post by dtsh » Sun Jun 19, 2022 4:44 am

I stumbled across an unexpected opportunity and found myself the owner of a Spencer 43x APO. This is now the second apochromat I own, the other being a very similar Leitz 40x apo. I am still in the very earliest stages of using it, so cannot say much other than that it appears to be in good shape. I have thus far been unsuccessful in producing any stacked images using it, it would seem that non-plan objectives are so much more difficult to process when using higher magnification objectives. I will have to re-read the documentation and see if I can adjust some settings to get better results. The toolset I use for stacking are the Hugin tools, align_image_stack and enfuse, mostly.
Spencer_43x_apo1.jpg
Spencer_43x_apo1.jpg (142.63 KiB) Viewed 1532 times
Spencer_43x_apo5.jpg
Spencer_43x_apo5.jpg (125.38 KiB) Viewed 1532 times

Post Reply