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Thread started 18 Aug 2011 (Thursday) 17:22
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What Grows On Your Root?

 
canonloader
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Aug 21, 2011 03:41 |  #16

Hi Jack,

Sad to say, but the market is flooded by cheap chinese knockoffs and that is one of them. You should start now, keeping an eye on E-bay, for Olympus or Nikon brand scopes. They come in all models, and stages of repair or disrepair, so you have to be careful, but you can generally find a really decent scope starting at about what that one sells for and up.

My particular scope was made in the mid 80's, but was rare even then, and parts for it are very hard to locate now. It was a specialized scope though. In Nikon, you want to look for Labophot or Optiphot models with all the parts intact and a return policy. For Olympus, look for a BHS model. Both scopes will need to have trinocular heads for photography. Binocular just won't do. Objective lenses are plentiful for 160mm tube length scopes, but the original makers are not making any more of them and the new lenses won't work on them.

Don't be fooled by the power of objective lenses either. The most your going to need will probably be a 40x. Anything above that is too much for anything as big as a spider or it's parts. My range of lenses is 2x, 4x, 10x, 20x, 40x and a recent 60x. My most used lenses are the 4x and 10x. For eyepiece lenses, a wide angle 10x is probably best.

The problem with the chinese knockoffs is, not the lenses. They have a beautiful, sharp and clear sight picture when viewing through the eyepieces. But even so, the lenses are cheap and not coated and not made for photography with modern camera sensors. But even worse, is the optional equipment below the stage. It is cheap made junk, where modern microscopes need really fine made condensers, lighting, filters and adjustment gears. Even modern scopes are still just a tube with an upper and lower lens and a way to focus them. That has not changed in 400 years. Lenses have gotten way better, yes, but the physics of it is still the same. All the real progress in technology for microscopes has come in the development of the light delivery system. And that mostly in the last 50 years or so.

The basic scope of 50 years ago had a mirror for light. Now, the basic scope must have Koehler lighting with lenses and filters, adjustable halogen light intensity, an Abbe condenser with a flip out tray for filters and darkfield inserts. They all have to be adjustable to center even the filament of the halogen bulb. And this is where the chinese knockoffs fail. They have all that stuff, sort of, but it's made like a cheap tin whistle and I have not seen any that allow you to center or focus the lamp filament.

Before buying anything on E-bay though, I would suggest a lot of reading and maybe even a beginners course in how to use a microscope from a local college or university. They have classes now you can just pay for and go sit in on without becoming a student. I would look into that. It'll be one of the best things you could do and save you a ton of money in the long run. Learn the scope, how to use it and particularly, what all the parts are, how to identify them and what they do.

Here are a couple of great links that helped me and I still use as a reference. If you spent the time reading these two sites, you will be way ahead of the game when you finally get a scope. Don't rush buying a scope, you'll be very sorry and a lot poorer if you do. That's experience talking. ;)

The Nikon site. (external link)

The Olympus site (external link).

My final suggestion is, buy an Olympus BHS scope. The add ons for specialized lighting and photography are somewhat cheaper and way more available than the Nikon stuff and from what I have seen, the optics are better. At least the images from the Olympus scopes look better to me.


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John ­ Koerner
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Aug 22, 2011 04:42 as a reply to  @ canonloader's post |  #17
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Thank you very much, sir, for taking the time.

I sincerely appreciate it,

Jack


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What Grows On Your Root?
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