seeking advice

[Judge]

Hi:
I’m a senior citizen interested in getting started in microscopy. I’ve been watching u-tube videos. I’ m thinking about a compound microscope in the $100.00 range. Any recommendations? Are two eye tubes (viewing) better than one? Thanks, Judge

[lorez2]

Hello Judge,

I have several scopes that would be great for you. Special deals for fellow SR Citz.

lorez2

[dtsh]

Hi:
I’m a senior citizen interested in getting started in microscopy. I’ve been watching u-tube videos. I’ m thinking about a compound microscope in the $100.00 range. Any recommendations? Are two eye tubes (viewing) better than one? Thanks, Judge

Most people tend to find a bino more comfortable to use. I have both and while I prefer a bino, I have a couple monocular scopes I use which I enjoy as much. I would suggest a bino especially if you expect to be viewing for longer periods of time, but if you expect to couple it to a camera most of the time, it largely doesn't matter. I personally tend to use the live-view feature of my camera aout as often as directly viewing.

There are a lot of very wonderful instruments from yesteryear available in that price range; many will come with 3 or 4 objectives. While more is nice, I have a couple of 3 objective microscopes which are very nice instruments; depending on what you expect to study, 4x, 10x, and 40x objectives or perhaps 10x, 40x, and 100x objectives can serve well. I mention these because they are not in very high demand, but allow one to get a very high quality instrument for a rather small investment.

I have an appreciation for microscopes with mirrors, an LED flashlight shining on a piece of paper can provide very bright and even illumination with such a setup and, once again, they are not in demand. Maybe not fancy, but certainly effective.

[don1357]

Used is usually a fraction of new.

Also the longer you are willing to hunt the better the chances you'll find the best bargain; if you have to pass on the first few that's fine, others will show up.

Your best approach is to learn about then before you commit; there are nuances that may end up bugging you once you know what's what.

[Chas]

Hi, slightly mis-aligned binocular heads can be quite tiring (sometimes near-impossible) to look through and there are a lot of difficult to get at surfaces that might need cleaning .. so my advice would be to get an old monocular microscope.
Microscopes with an angled eyepiece tube have an extra glass prism to bend the light .. but microscopes that you physically tilt are really not much more than an empty tube with an eyepiece at the top and objectives at the bottom.
So a tiltable straight-tube monocular is much less risky thing to buy.
Over time a lot of the glass surfaces develop a foggy coating which makes everything look awful, but it can be wiped off... start with the eyepiece.
Have a look to check that the microscope has a condenser.. some middle aged low-price imported ones do not and may just have a disk with holes in positioned undeneath the stage.
Maybe get something that was once made and widely used in your country, perhaps one that is a little older than you, even.

Take the good advice, above, about resting some paper on the mirror and illuminating that up with small led desklamp or something similar.

[Chas]

Judge, it might be that you were thinking of buying a new microscope with your $100.
I have little experience of these, but looking online; some of them do not have a fine focus control knob, which I am pretty sure you would miss.
Some do not have the standard threading on their objectives (called RMS) so you would struggle to stick better objectives on, if you wanted, at a later date.
Some use an unusual tube-length .. the standard is 160mm, so again other standard objectives might not work too well.
This is not to say dont buy one....it is just a list of things to look out for.

[Javier]

I started microscopy last year with a monocular basic scope. I upgraded this year to a binocular, still basic scope, and completely changed for the better my experience. My current scope is the Amscope b 120 (around 230 $). It is an ubiquitous microscope made in china, many times re-branded. I think it is wonderful for beginners.

Here there are some examples of what you might expect to see with this equipment (of course it looks much more beautiful through the eyepieces): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKJN5n ... vhJApF1vow