I have a surplus Labophot condenser block available.

Thanks Alan. I found the CHK2 brochure on your excellent site. The item certainly looks like the CHK2 but is advertised as plain CHK. I'll send the vendor a message.

I'm considering a plan B in case me efforts to "fix" my Labophot focus block render it unusable. I've seen an Olympus CHK stand for sale. I saw a reference by John Hallmén to this microscope in a 2010 posting about a Nikon 50x lens: With Nikkor 200/4 AI on top of a Olympus CHK frame with the 50x in ...

Thanks for these replies Ray and Chris. I'll start summoning up the courage to open up the focus block. If I find anything interesting I'll post an update.
-Martin

I have a Labophot focus block built into a rather amateurish imitation of a stepping motor driven Bratcam. I put it together several years ago and am reluctant to dismantle it as it is more or less doing what I want and experience has taught me to resist the temptation to try and fix everything that...

Thanks Rik. I'll give it a try

Charles Krebs wrote:...most people that can find it far easier to view cross-eyed stereo.

Thanks Charles. This is certainly true for me...

Just swap the images over. Thanks Chris I expect this is just me being slow on the uptake, but I'm not sure how to swap them over. Is it the order you select them before using the stereo tools? I find it easy to cross my eyes so maybe I should stick with cross-eyes stereo because at least it works ...

This is a palp from a Anelosimus vittatus spider. The spider was in 70% alcohol positioned on a layer of glass beads in an excavated glass block and was photographed using a Tucsen ISH1000 10 MP microscope camera fitted in place of the eyepiece of my Russian-built Lomo Bimam R13 compound microscope ...

I'm amazed at both these efforts, and would be unable to do anything as good. Unless I've misunderstood it, Chris keeps the original image of the "bad" leg, which has a tibial spur which could be vital for identifying the insect. This disappears if the opposite leg is used to create a new "bad" leg....

Nice work Koorosh, and also GemBro!
GemBro, It would be interesting to hear exactly what you did to improve the image.

Thanks for these photos and explanation. With subjects that may try to escape, do you shoot them through the glass?

I would be interested to see photos of your perspex boxes.

The JML picture definitely shows more detail than the crop. For what it's worth (those JMLs were pretty cheap), I'd keep it and put up with swapping sets. Thanks for these useful comments. I especially like your subtle highlighting of non-lens areas for improvement! I guess the lens was cheap compa...

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the head of a small wasp. The image on the left was done with the JML 20x NA.30, the one on the right was done with my "old" set-up of a Nikon CFI Nikkor 200mm f4 as a tube lens for a Nikon CFI BE Plan Achromat 10x Objective. I've cropped the right-hand image to ...