Balplan Epi

[microb]

So I don't know what to think of the DF with this Balplan Epi. How should the light source be lensed when shooting down into the epi?

On the left is an LED top and laser line bottom for brightfield.

On the right are the same light sources with the DF cube in place.

[Scarodactyl]

I am not sure, brightfield pn mine works great with a fiber optic light guide adapted on but darkfield does not.
Simple solution: get the DIC attachment

[microb]

I am not sure, brightfield pn mine works great with a fiber optic light guide adapted on but darkfield does not.
Simple solution: get the DIC attachment

I have DIC attachments. I hooked one up a couple years ago to an Olympus (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7327&p=64527&hilit= ... pus#p64518)

So your DF doesn't work either?

What goes here in this picture. With the four screw holes, I'm obviously missing something here:

[Scarodactyl]

Oh yeah, I know you have one--I'm just saying my opinion that epi dic is generally better than darkfield. The balplan epi dic isn't perfect but it's very solid (particularly at 20x it seems) and you can get a good darkfield-lile black and white effect with the right setting. I actually just got some fresh objectives and a new head for mine in this morning, but the head is misaligned in just the same way my last one was. I played with it some earlier today but it gave me eye strain.

Your layout is a bit different from mine. I don't have a field diaphragm in that slot (or at all), the rotating polarizer is there instead.

I figured out my darkfield issue. The dic attachment blocks it. Guess they agreed with my assessment.

[microb]

I figured out my darkfield issue. The dic attachment blocks it. Guess they agreed with my assessment.

This ebay item shows that the slider carries an iris, I'm assuming it's FS and the one fix is AS.

Also, for the DIC, I took the lenses out to do the attachment to Olympus. I have notes some place. But are the doublets flat side out or curved side?

[) dic prism (]
(] dic prism [)

[microb]

What do the filters look like that fit into the V's of the epi filter slider slots?

[apochronaut]

Something of note is that the common telescope lens situated in the back of the nosepiece is an objective back lens, common to all of the objectives. In the case of the epi BF and DF systems, that lens is different, for each. The BF/DF lens is integrated into specific nosepiece cat.#'s. Those are 31-18-72-21, 31-18-72-22 or 31-18-16-23 as two different 3 objective arrangements and a 4 objective centerable arrangement. There was no 5 objective BF/DF nosepiece. The cat. # is on a glued on tag fixed to the nosepiece collar. Other nosepiece cat.#'s are BF only.

[Scarodactyl]

As a side note, I spent some time cleaning up the dic attachment on mine and I think that I have previously underestimated the system a bit. I still need an aligned binocular head to test it fully (looks like I can put the guts from one into a trinocular shell--for now I've oneyed it) but I got the vertical adjustment working better and can now tune it to match each objective for much better results. Hopefully I'll finally wrap this up and make a proper thread rather than hijacking yours more.