Microscope Lens choice

[Anonymous]

I’ve just bought a second hand Brunel IMXZD stereo microscope with built in camera, excellent condition with a heavy duty OE aluminium travel case, bit of a bargain at. £150. Was bought mainly as SWMBO wanted a bit more magnification and stability than the loupes she’s got that she uses for plants and pests. It’s a 10×-45× zoom scope using 10x eyepieces. Now of course she wants more from it. I’ve no  prior knowledge of microscopy, an extra 2× taking it up to 90× would be ample but which way would be best way, 20× eyepieces or a 2× supplementary objective, or is there no real difference other than the actual lens quality?.

 

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

At risk of showing my ignorance..
In my past life, I used microscopes a lot, but never really worried about fine theory about their workings.
I’d guess the best way forward depends on exactly what the user wants from it. Have you considered a change of objective lens, assuming such exists, You would lose some depth of focus but hopefully get a higher quality initial ‘image’ before magnifying it further?
It’s been many years since I had cause to make enquiries at Brunel microscopes, but always found them very helpful when I did – mostly to do with recovering from damage caused by accident or neglect.,,,

pgk

[Anonymous]

Brunel still do eyepieces and supplementary objectives for it, don’t think there are replacement main objectives. Was trying to find out which would be the best way, if one or the other is considered the right way to go or it doesn’t matter image quality wise. Thought a supplementary might be the wrong way adding another lens in the chain, but I just don’t know/got a clue.

[Peter TuckerParticipant @petertucker86088]

Hi Bezzerr,

Changing to 20x eyepieces or adding a 2x objective will achieve the same total magnification, however the effect will be different.  Using 20x eyepieces may lower contrast and cause the image to appear “fuzee” also they will not affect the magnification in the camera.

A 2x objective should maintain image quality and increase camera magnification but it will greatly reduce the working distance she has between the object and the objective.

Hope this helps.

Peter.

[Anonymous]

Cheers Peter. probably start with the objective then and see how she goes, can always get eyepieces later to compare and experiment with.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

With microscopes, you need to measure the diameter of the lens where it fits into the body. Compound microscopes commonly use 23.2mm diameter lenses, but your stereo model will use 30 or 30.5mm eyepieces. I have recently bought pairs of widefield lenses in X10 and X25 from China and have been pleasently surprised by their quality and low price.

[Author]

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