About me

What is your microscopy history? What are your interests? What equipment do you use?
Post Reply
Message
Author
Manu76
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Mar 17, 2021 6:21 pm

About me

#1 Post by Manu76 » Thu Mar 18, 2021 9:06 pm

Hello all,
I had to think for a moment before introducing myself.
Since I am here through and for microscopy I will start with the hobby. I'm an amateur microscopist for about two years, maybe a little longer. When I bought my microscope I was just messing around and then I found the videos from Oliver which are really helpful and realistic. That was the start of the adventure. I live in Belgium. I am 44 years old and still learn every day. About myself I can say that I used to study metallurgy when I was a student but later I worked as admin. I studied again and graduated as a herbalist just because I love biology and herbalism. Much later I studied again in the human sciences. So, yes studying is a part of my life now. Human sciences opens the way to a higher degree, for instance microbiology is a possibility. Notwithstanding my age, further study has not been postponed, simply because I am interested in everything and especially in biology. But, I'm not a fast learner so I take my time. Learning is also a part of microscopy and that's one of the reasons I came to this forum.

About my microscopes: I use an educative compound microscope. I'm pretty happy with it. It's sturdy and good for educational purposes. It's an Amscope T490 finite microscope. Unfortunately not infinite. I have two darkfield filters (dry and oil). I own a simple 2mp camera from Amscope. It's a bit limited in resolution, but very good for videos. I think to buy a better device later on with something around 5mp, but I haven't decided yet. I tried my Nikon D40 for photography but it's a little to weak for the task and I cannot preview the pictures with this model. Sometimes I use my smartphone which is delivering a higher resolution than the camera, but ofcourse through the eyepiece. I have been using different techniques since I started microscopy. Besides the darkfield I also use Rheinberg and oblique light. The halogen light source was actually well below my expectations from the start. Magnification from 40x was very dark and impossible to focus. Because I also wanted to take some videos and photos, I then bought cheap Chinese achromatic plan lenses through Aliexpress and that turned out a lot better, but it remained gloomy and not sharp for the 40x. At least it was plan. Recently I did some tinkering to have an extra LED light and at the same time a much stronger lightsource. After some trying and searching the result is finally good with the 40x and the resolution is also better. In fact, I'm really satisfied now. I usually use 10x and 20x, but I like the extra 40x and it was an innovation in my enjoyment of microscopy. With the 60x I have enough light, but it is foggy and not clear, so I leave this lens aside. I used the 100x with oil maybe 5 or 6 times in all the time I do the hobby. If the resolution were better, I would use it more, but I don't like the thing. Also this magnification is not good for the kind of specimens I look at. Nonetheless, the darkfield with oil is actually nice. Not really good but for some reason it's better than in brightfield. What strikes me is that the oil darkfield filter gives actually very good results with smaller lenses and without oil. Even better than with the dry one.

So what do I watch the most? Water samples, prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Plant parts or insects. Occasionally I use a stereo microscope to view insects, plants or minerals. Why did I chose this forum? Because I have been reading it for some time now and it very intresting.

In addition, I occasionally follow the Youtube channels of Microbehunter so I wanted finally to join the forum. I can also sharpen my English while reading or writing posts. There are only benefits.

PeteM
Posts: 2983
Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2016 6:22 am
Location: N. California

Re: About me

#2 Post by PeteM » Thu Mar 18, 2021 9:31 pm

Welcome.

Post Reply