Will this be of any use?

Yawns · Post by **Yawns** » Sat Oct 06, 2018 6:09 am

My problem: my eyes are in poor condition..and I am having great difficulty to prepare a simple house fly or ant for photo stacking.. to pin, to stretch the legs, to align the antennas ...

Currently I need to use a Raynox 202 ( 25 Diopt) to do so.. but with only one hand free is complicated ...

Possible solution:
a budget Stereo Microscope, as I'm not interested in microscopy, "quality" is not a must, but I don't want anything "toy'ish" too.. I just want to see comfortable what I'm doing...

But I know nothing .. and after a lot of research the market standard seems to be 20X ... 2x lens , 10x eyepieces ...

I fear it is too much magnification for my purpose.

After browsing a few websites (in Europe.. it has to be in europe because of taxes) i'm inclined to buy one from Brunel (UK)
because they sell accessories too...

I could buy the base Brunel MX1 (2x10) and aditional 5X eyepices and a 1x lens.. so I will have 5x, 10, 20X magnification available.

Anyway I still having doubts and having fear to spend around 200 euros to find only later it's not of use any use for the purpose... (excessive magnification)

If you can give an opinion / advice I would be grateful... (considering the purpose... to prepare and pin regular insects (ants, flies, bugs...) for photo stacking in the 2:1 to 10: 1 range) .. nothing too small.

From the Brunel website:

The he stereo eyetubes are inclined at 45° to allow ease of use. The MX1 has x10 widefield eyepieces and an objective pair of x2. Focus is by rack and pinion with a pole stand allowing coarse adjustment. There is a wide range of accessories for the MX1 including additional objectives and eyepieces that allow the magnification range to be extended to x5 to x120. Suitable for photomicrography.

--AdminCS edited format

NikonUser · Post by **NikonUser** » Sat Oct 06, 2018 7:13 am

my scope ranges from 6x-50x; for insect preparation I rarely go beyond 25x.
I just took a look at an 8mm (including antennae) midge; if I wanted to prepare it for photography then I would use 6x.
Smaller ants would likely need 12x.
Your magnification range of 5x, 10x and 20x sounds ideal for your needs.

Yawns · Post by **Yawns** » Sat Oct 06, 2018 7:38 am

NikonUser wrote:....
Your magnification range of 5x, 10x and 20x sounds ideal for your needs.

Thank you for your quick response and for being so reassuring .. I have the order ready since yesterday but I was having fear to click the "buy" button...
I'm so tired to "try AFTER you buy" as I don't have acess to equipment (friends, clubs, physical shops...)
I will place the order.. Thank you.

António

enricosavazzi · Post by **enricosavazzi** » Sat Oct 06, 2018 7:39 am

A few weeks ago I started a thread about head-mounted stereo magnifiers, see http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... highlight= . My purpose was something I could use in the field, but these magnifiers are primarily meant for working on a table top, which is your purpose, and for leaving both hands free, which is also your purpose. Most types (except the ones designed for surgeons) are far cheaper than a stereomicroscope.

For higher magnification than approximately 3x-5x, a stereomicroscope may be more practical. I agree that 20x is a bit too much for your planned use, and that 5x to 10x is more reasonable. The above thread also mentioned some cheap stereomicroscopes, of the "straight" type (i.e. the eyepieces are vertically oriented downward, not obliquely angled. For anything more than casual use, a "straight" stereomicroscope will force you to crane your neck and become painful to use, so I would suggest one with oblique eyepieces.

The above thread mentioned the Amscope SE100 (or a similar type). There are a few Amscope models of the oblique eyepiece type that starts around 200 €. I have no experience with these, maybe some other members can comment.

Going the way of a second-hand stereomicroscope would get you much more for the money. For example, there are Olympus educational models like the SZ that do not cost much more and are perfectly suitable for university classrooms (I know because I used one myself for years as a university researcher, although it was not my main investigating tool but only a handy supplement to visual observation). However, it can be risky to purchase such a second-hand scope without a good understanding of what to expect, how to test it after purchase, and how to fix possible problems.

eBay sellers sometimes don't know what they are selling and have no idea how to test it. For example, right now there is an Olympus legacy compound binocular microscope being advertised on eBay as a stereomicroscope, which it is not and would be useless for your purpose. As another example, I once purchased on eBay a Zeiss stereomicroscope described as in "good condition", which had evidently been dumped in sea water and left to rust inside, plus some of the internal optics had shattered and the shards were rattling within the tube. Purchasing from a well-known member of this site (or another respected online amateur microscopy site) would probably be less risky.

Troels · Post by **Troels** » Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:45 am

Yawns,
I had the same problem.

After a lot of search I found an old Carl Zeiss Jena stereo microscope for around €200 in excellent condition and a nice wooden box. I am especially happy with the lowest 6.3x magnification, but also use the 10x and higher.

For much praparation work even lower magnification is often usefull, so after recomandations from this forum I invested in a pair of headband magnifiers with 4 interchangable acrylic lenses (1.5x, 2x, 2.5x, 3x). (The light is not really usefull.)

After gettting used to adjust the angle and the working distance they have become a very valuable tool for me.

Yawns · Post by **Yawns** » Sat Oct 06, 2018 1:57 pm

Too late to make changes

After NikonUser reply I placed my order ..
in fact I got a good deal .. I noticed Brunel has a link for "Used and Sales Demonstration equipment" in the very bottom of the long menu.. I got the microscope with discount, the x1 objective pair for free. Just had to buy new the 5x eyepieces .. I got everything for 135 euros rather than the initial 205...
Thank you.
António

Yawns · Post by **Yawns** » Tue Oct 16, 2018 6:37 pm

... I got the new toy today in the morning and I was playing all day .. I'm very pleased and resolves a huge problem.. my lack of vision to clean/align/pin insects...
- as I was suspecting the 20 X (2x10) standard is overkill for the vast majority of insect sizes ... the good range seems to be 5-10X... see next pictures. The insects are on a ruler and i added circles to show what I see at a specific magnification.
I have 5 ( 5x1) 10 (10x1) 15 (5x3) and 30x (10x3)
- The projected image is huge.. it's like the area of DVD disk placed at 10cm of my face. (with the 10X eyepieces)
with te 5X eyepieces the projected image is smaller but big enough.. like a tennis ball at 10 cm of my face. This was a bad surprise.. I thought it would not make a difference with he change of eyepieces)
- The working distance is huge at any magnification.. 6-8 cm . I can use my hands and tools very comfortable under the lens. It's nice to hold the insect with a tool in the left hand and use a pin in he right hand to clean / align legs etc... very easy to work.
- This is a low budget microscope.. though is not a "toy". - - The image quality is impressive.. clear, without any sort of visible annoying aberrations or distortions. I just can imagine the quality of the serious ones.
- It's a very nice piece of kit ...
- Paid like 140 euros total (after VAT and shipping from UK) ...but I bought extra 5X eyepieces and an extra objective. The basic model was like 80-90 euros or so

Thank you all who helped and advised.

enricosavazzi · Post by **enricosavazzi** » Tue Oct 16, 2018 11:52 pm

10x eyepieces are a kind of standard on compound microscopes, like your stereo. Objectives are generally designed to take full advantage of 10x eyepieces.

Unfortunately, this means that objectives generally do not provide a much wider field of view than sufficient for 10x eyepieces. The way lower-magnification eyepieces work is by displaying a narrower angle of view, so in practice the field of view with a 5x eyepiece is the same, or slightly larger (in terms of subject area) than the FoV with 10x eyepieces, but not twice as wide. This is not a specific problem with your microscope, but a common one with most microscopes.

The most common way to reduce magnification without sacrificing the angle of view through the eyepieces is by swapping out the objective with a lower magnification one, or to mount a negative add-on lens in front of the current objective, and continue to use the 10x eyepieces. I don't know whether your microscope supports this.