Springtails and other soil mesofauna - Microscope reccomendations
Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2021 2:56 am
Hello! I'm a total beginner to microscopy, outside of some college biology labs. A major interest of mine is photographing collembola and other sub-mm soil fauna (at frankly terrible resolutions, my macro setup isn't ideal for anything much smaller than a bee), but I've really been wanting to start collecting slides and really being able to properly ID them under a microscope. Been poking my head around various microscopy boards, but I've been struggling between the bombardment of astroturfed websites just shilling for top sellers on Amazon and inconsistent reviews for the cheap brands like OMAX. I'm in a bit of an interesting situation here, as I don't necessarily want the *most* magnification -- lower-power microscopes seem to be better for imaging things on the 0.1-2mm scale, rather than in the micron range (amphipods, isopods, ostracods, collembola, mites, etc).
My budget is about $500, plus or minus 100. A trinocular that you can mount a DSLR on would be ideal. Darkfield microscopy looks appealing, also, so any that have relatively inexpensive filters for that would be nice! I'm really totally clueless here so I might need a bit of hand-holding. No idea what brands and such are standard outside of the big $8k Nikon microscopes.
Thank you for any help you can provide, and I really look forward to chatting with all of you!
My budget is about $500, plus or minus 100. A trinocular that you can mount a DSLR on would be ideal. Darkfield microscopy looks appealing, also, so any that have relatively inexpensive filters for that would be nice! I'm really totally clueless here so I might need a bit of hand-holding. No idea what brands and such are standard outside of the big $8k Nikon microscopes.
Thank you for any help you can provide, and I really look forward to chatting with all of you!