Bought an Olympus BH-2 and a Nikon SC; I have some questions..

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seta666
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Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 8:50 am
Location: Castellon, Spain

Bought an Olympus BH-2 and a Nikon SC; I have some questions..

Post by seta666 »

Hello,

This week I came across two cheap microscopes locally; a very dusty Olympus BH-2 and an old Nikon SC which looked like new and both fully working; I paid 250$ for both. There was also a nikon SE for 120$ but the condenser can not be focused on that one.
The bad thing is I drop the olympus turret and lenses to the floor, I did not make sure everything was tightened before moving it. The 100/1.30 oil took the worse part, lens seems ok but got a dent on the barrel and the spring does not work (kind of gets stuck), if I could remove it maybe I could sand the dent off; the other lenses seem to work ok

The condenser on the BH-2 is the flip top swing one and on the nikon an Abbe 1.25

Somethings I would like to make:
- My plan is to clean up the Olympus and use it for observation and also expend time with it learning microscope basics, I had never used one before
- I want to saw off the top part of the nikon so I can use it with my hybrid vertical set up, this way I could use my mitutoyos and nikon CFI 60 lenses with it. The coarse focus on the nikon is a bit stiff, the fine focus works ok.
- Adding a filter holder to both condensers(It is forum member Saul who makes them, right?). Having brightfield, darkfield, polarization plus Rheinberg is more than enough to star with.
- Change the lamps to LED cobs (maybe get one of those led/flash adapters for the BH-2) , the hole in the SC almost fits one of the heat sinks I have. I also would like to control the light intensity if not to much work, otherwise I will use ND filters. On the nikon I will also add an aperture control after the Led COB
- I gave a try at the afocal method by means of 40mm Konica Hexanon pancake lens I already, great fun. How big is the difference quality wise between lets say the rare NFK 1.67x and using the afocal with the 10x eyepiece?. Also tried it with some finite nikon lenses via direct projection and seems to work well too. If the focal methods gives subpar results I may go and use nikon lenses instead.
- The BH2 came with achromats, which I guess are pretty basic. Are the Splans worth investing in?
- Today I ended getting a trinocular head for the BH-2; it comes with a MCA Olympus LB Neoplan TV lens, what is it?
- I would not mind adding an adapter between the trinocular and the scope to fit a raynox so I could use the nikon CFI60 lenses I own, any ideas how if possible?
- Any tips on how to properly clean both scopes? Specially the focus blocks

Some pictures:

Nikon SC turret, the objectives have some kind of corrective lens in the revolver
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Some pictures of the Nikon SC block, stage and condenser
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Nikon SC base, with heat sink, cob holder, cob diffuser plus iris and scope´s light diffuser
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BH2 lenses, condenser, turret with nikons/jml, 80A and polarizer on top of the light dome
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NEX-5N and Konica Hexanon 40mm afocal method on BH-2

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Regards
Javier

Alan Wood
Posts: 381
Joined: Wed Dec 29, 2010 3:09 pm
Location: Near London, U.K.
Contact:

Re: Bought an Olympus BH-2 and a Nikon SC; I have some questions..

Post by Alan Wood »

Javier

I have lots of documents for the Olympus BH-2:
http://www.alanwood.net/olympus/downloads.html

There is a set of exploded parts diagrams for the LB objectives, which might help to fix the spring on your 100, and there are instructions too:
http://www.alanwood.net/downloads/olymp ... ky-tip.pdf

My BH-2 came with A objectives, and I used them happily for a few years until I could afford to gradually replace them with SPlans.

I have always used the NFK photo eyepieces, so I don't know how the image quality compares with afocal.

I have seen several MCA adapters and lenses for Olympus, but so far I have failed to locate any information about them.

Alan Wood

seta666
Posts: 1071
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 8:50 am
Location: Castellon, Spain

Re: Bought an Olympus BH-2 and a Nikon SC; I have some questions..

Post by seta666 »

Hi Alan,

I have been looking at some of those documents in your site these last few day, lots of valuable information....and thanks, that is exactly what I was looking for, I have to remove the rubber band and there is a screw that hold the objective inside the barrel; DONE!! In 5 min the 100x repaired and the 40X cleaned, very easy procedure.

I already found a good deal on a 10x Splan and also found a very good deal on a 20 and 40 Splans, unfortunately seller does not want to ship abroad.
Anyway, no hurries; I may test the Splan afocal method against a nikon counter part via direct projection before investing in more Olympus lenses.

Today I could test the nikon SC base with my stacking set up, the focus block unfortunately falls down on its own weight, I hope I can fix it. Anyway, as I use for stacking a motorized rail so I just had to get the focus all the way down before stacking. The 5W COB led I installed is very bright compared with the 30w lamp it had before, I would like to add some kind of linear or pwm dimming, I will have to do some research. In the meanwhile I will use some ND filters I have.

This is a cross polarization test I did on a onion peel calcium oxalate crystals; 31x with nikon CF 50/0.55 and raynox DCR-250 NEX-5N

Image

Full size
Stereo

Regards
Javier

seta666
Posts: 1071
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 8:50 am
Location: Castellon, Spain

Re: Bought an Olympus BH-2 and a Nikon SC; I have some questions..

Post by seta666 »

Some updates;
Yesterday I received the BH2-TR30 trinocular head. I went ahead and modified it to use it with nikon finite lenses, everything I used I already owned. May need to get some new adapters to finetune it. I like how compact the set up is compared to some phototube set ups I have seen

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- I could not manage to form any image with the provided MCA LB Neoplan TV Lens, no matter how close or far away camera was.. I even tried afocal method to see if it was ment to be used that way, no luck either; any clue in how to use it?. Glass is on the narrow part of it, the top part unscrews and has no glass. Some pictures of it
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- So next I went ahead and unscrewed the top part of the trinocular tube (closed the trinocular head with the lever in case I droped something accidentally) , then I took a 37mm to 58mm step down ring and with help of the spacer ring trinocular head has drilled 3 holes on it. So now the trinocular head has a 58mm thread. Then I used a 58mm circular polarizer with no glass that allows me to rotate the camera, 58-52 step up ring, 52-52 female-female ring and a Nex-52 male adapter. This gives me almost parfocality (20-40um off). I have a 13-20mm nex-m42 focusing helicoid I plan to use but need new step rings I do not have, for now I rather be able to rotate the camera than be perfectly parfocal.
To make it parfocal I plan getting a 37 male-58 female step up ring, a thin 58mm polarizer (without glass, to rotate the camera), M42 male to 58 male, NEX-M42 Focusing Helicoid. Need to measure everything to be sure.

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- I also added a 52mm linear polarizer on top of microscope light via a couple step down rings (52-58, 58-67), which fits nicely. a 3D polarizer film from cinema glasses sits between trinocular head and nosepiece. With the help of some step ring I also made a condenser filter holder for 32mm filters, for now it is just taped to it, but does work (not pictured).

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- I removed the lamp and added a 6W (can be driven to 12W) 5000K CRI97 COB LED, holding it with an articulated arm for now.
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- So far I have tried nikon finite BD/M plans and although they are designed for 210mm tube they do work very nicely with good corner performance. I can also use a 1.5x Vivitar teleconverter (NEx-nikon adapter>Vivitar TC>nikon M42>M42-52 male adapter) for lenses that do not cover APS-C well. It does work, however depending on the subject I can get a mild hot spot, this is a common problem with lenses that were design for film when used on digital cameras. I also own and old 2X M42 TC

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- I think I will take the nikon CFN route, get the CFN plans first and with time replace them with Fluor/APO versions. Between those and the BD/M plans I already own I think I will be well served. I could try to adapt the WHK10/20 L and used afocal method, it just seems not worthy. If I owned lots of olympus APO glass I would look for a NFK 1.67x but is not the case.

- No hurries for going to infinity, but I finally decide to take this route I think I will stick with 45mm parfocal. I do own a few nikon nikon infinity lenses I use with my vertical set up; 4x and 10X BE plans(these owning the Mitus I do not use at all) plus a couple (20x and 40x) of nikon CF BD EPI lenses and the CF 50/0.55ELWD RMS. Maybe a 20, 40 and 60/100 Olympus biological 0.17 infinity lenses would be enough to cover this route. For that the Nikon CFI60 lenses I own would have to go but I do not see myself getting a Eclipse scope anytime soon.

At this time I am just setting everything up, once I make few stacks and have it properly running I may start a new thread with the whole process. Nest I want to add a stepper motor to the focus block and make LED light dimmable.

Alan Wood
Posts: 381
Joined: Wed Dec 29, 2010 3:09 pm
Location: Near London, U.K.
Contact:

Re: Bought an Olympus BH-2 and a Nikon SC; I have some questions..

Post by Alan Wood »

Javier

Have you tried to use the MCA photo eyepiece as a normal eyepiece?

If it is anything like the Olympus NFK photo eyepieces, then it should function as a normal eyepiece, although you will probably need to get your eye very close to it.

If it does not work as a normal eyepiece, then I suspect that there is something wrong with it.

Alan Wood

seta666
Posts: 1071
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 8:50 am
Location: Castellon, Spain

Re: Bought an Olympus BH-2 and a Nikon SC; I have some questions..

Post by seta666 »

Hi Alan,
I have just tried it as an eyepiece an no way to form an image close to eyepiece, however if I stay around 50cm away from it I can see an Image does form. I would need 50cm extension to test it, and I do not have that many extension tubes
If I turn it the other way round I can form an image close to it, kind of small and quality deteriorates fast once away from the center. However

There is certainly room for more glass inside it, maybe a glass element got lost; I took a random glass element I had from a disassembled lens, put it inside the MCA and it does form an image when close to it. I will contact the seller but truth is I bought the trinocular head, did not have much hope on this photo eyepiece.

Good thing is direct projection works well; yesterday I run quick partial stack (35 images with +/- 2um steps ) of a fresh garlic peel at 15X, camera is NEX-5N; came out a bit noisy as it was underexposed almos 2EV, my bad. Also I was holding the fine focus knob during the stack, which may have caused some vibrations.

Lens used was a Nikon BD plan 20/0.40 210/0, lens is designed for a 210mm tube, with the 160mm BH-2 set up it runs a 15X; I wanted to check corner performance, which is a bit poor at 15x ( quite as expected) but still OK.

Image

And here is the Full size image

I just run another quick test, this time Calcium oxalate crystals cross polarized at 20X, direct projection with Nikon BD Plan 20/0.40.. 30 pictures with 2um steps, 5000K Led light. I added 50mm extension to the photo tube to get to the 210mm needed by the lens.
Image

In the Full size image there are lots of small details to see, corner performance is good enough.

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