Wow! Very, very clean and colorful results!

First, gorgeous pics! Nice composition and very detail-rich.
Second, it is a crime to post a picture of a blister beetle on your bare finger without elaborating. Is...is that OK?

You need a 3mm thick window, there are some from China on eBay for like 20usd. You can 3d print a cap, it can go very close to the front lens, precise distance isnt important.

Thanks! The 60x shot was not stitched, just a much smaller copper inclusion. Even with decent overlap stitching the 40x image didnt go that well--it has some real corner shading in coaxial illumination. I'll have to tinker with that some more.

Thanks! There is not much working distance but enough for shallow inclusions, .37mm total with the oil objective (since there is no glass) and similar for the 40x water objective. I'd love to get a long working distance oil objective in spite of the logistical issues with keeping it immersed but the...

I've recently been having some fun working on these challenging mineral inclusions, three-dimensional flakes of native copper floating within charoite. Charoite is a lesser-known gem. It is a rare mineral with odd chemistry, and gem grade material is only found in one location in Russia. It is found...

That is the good model, but it may have an ND filter slider installed where the rotating polarizer goes, and possibly no analyzer too. If you have a 3d printer these would not be too hard to replace by printing a new frame and putting a cheap film polarizer. Or you may be fine with it as is.

Presumably those are just on the surface, while the white zones on your first bug go in.

Yeah, this is those white zones showing theough the reddish shell.

I would guess there might be a fixed polarizer and analyzer in that simple illuminator but I could be wrong. You'll probably want to eventually get the more advanced illuminator with the rotating polarizer (really easy to find without the rotating polarizer, the polarizer is the expensive part for w...

The way it is presented in the catalogue is as the LCPlanApo/LCPlamFl-LCD series, which would be redundant if the LC stood for LCD. It gets better. Apparently there was a BH2 era equivalent just labeled 'RK 20'. https://i.imgur.com/lCQKAI8.jpg Huh. R eally K ool? Like most industrial scopes from the...

OK, I had a brainwave on this. Cover caps are expensive and only available in a limited range of thicknesses, but even if I had a full set they'd be awful to use as I want to. The thread on the caps is m21x0.5mm and it's like 3mm deep, which means it'd be a long and slow process to swap caps. I neve...

Oooooh, this is going to be fun!
I just remembered I still need to lend you my thorlabs 2x, though it looks like you have plenty to keep you busy.

Confocal microcopy is really amazing, though I assume this required very careful prep to get such great results. Really love these!

I wonder how hard it would be to add another lens to resize be image as in a microscope mag changer to get the image better sized for the sensor.