Nikon CFN Fluor / Planapo 100 160/0.17

[Soki]

Hey guys,

you guys helped me a lot so I hope someone can answer my question.
I have a Nikon CFN Fluor 100 1.3-0.8 160/0.17 and I like it.
Because of the Iris I will definitely keep the Fluor either way.
The CA correction is very good for a Fluor objective.
Is it worth to upgrade to a Nikon CFN Planapo 100/1.4 160/0.17?
It’s pretty expensive and I don’t want to buy it if it’s not a notably better performer.

Thank you,
Simon

[PeteM]

I'd be inclined to say no. While you gain a slight increase in n.a. and resolution, the extra lens elements mean some loss in contrast. And you lose a bit of working distance. Too thick a cover slip and you won't see much beyond it.

A 60x Plan Apo, if there's an urge for another fine objective, might be a better choice. Same 1.4 n.a., but a bit more working distance under the cover slip.

In addition, it looks like you have DIC. The Nikon finite Plan Fluors work wonderfully with Optiphot DIC - not sure you'd see any improvement with a 100x Plan Apo if you already have a 100x Plan Fluor objective.

[viktor j nilsson]

I agree with PeteM. While I haven't tried the 100x's, I can't imagine the difference being very noticable. All the Nikon CF (non-plan) Fluors I own are really excellent (10x 0.50, 20x 0.75, 40x 0.85, 40x 1.30). The 40x 0.85 is perhaps the weakest link, as it does seem to be a slight step behind the CFN PlanApo 40x 0.95 based on comparison photos I've seen. The 40x 1.30, however, is amazing. I have directly compared the 20x against the 20x PlanApo, and they are really really close. I would be very surprised if the 100x PlanApo was dramatically better than the 100x Fluor. Btw, you have the non-plan version, as in the link below, correct?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nikon-Fluor-10 ... 3968429254

If you have the UW head and 26.5mm eyepieces, I'm sure that the PlanApo's would greatly outperform the non-plan Fluors for visual use. But with 18/20mm visual eyepieces and CF PL photo eyepieces, the non-plan Fluors perform really well, almost to the end of the field in my experience.

It seems like I'm moving away from Nikon CF after equipping my Olympus Vanox with PlanApos, but if I had continued to invest in Nikon I would definitely had bought a 60x 1.40 planapo. My impression is that there has been more of those on the market over the last year or so, for quite decent prices.

[Duke]

I have CFN Plan Apo 100x 1.40 in my collection, it's not really that great even in terms of resolution in most circumstances. With such high aperture and small working distance, it is very sensitive to environment and sample itself, it would outperform Fluor only in ideal conditions, fragile thing, and breaks a sweat every time you need to move a specimen. Most of the time I prefer using CF Plan 100x/1.25 DIC instead, since it is much more handy and reliable in terms of the image quality. I do not have CFN PlanApo 60x/1.40, but I have CFI60 PlanApo 60xa/1.40, and it is awesome. But I think, most desirable for me is CFI60 Plan Fluor 40x 1.30, I've had Zeiss Plan-NeoFluar 40x 1.30, and it was amazing, I sold it because I can't be bothered dealing with western germany "tube lens correction of spherochromatic aberrations" baloney (there's an 10+ different tube lenses, each for specific head and designed to be used with certain objective series - never works).
Maybe you should try Flour 40x 1.30 https://www.ebay.com/itm/133490813120 instead?

[Soki]

Hey guys,

thanks a lot for your help! I‘ve a Nikon CF Planapo 40 1.0 and a CFN Planapo 60 0.95. Both are absolutely amazing in brightfield and PZO Pluta DIC.
That’s why I thought the 100x Planapo may be worth it for me, but I will get a Planapo 60 1.4 or a Neofluar 40 1.3.
I have a Zeiss Planapo 100 PH3 and a Zeiss Neofluar 100 PH3 and the Planapo is noteably better. But I tested them only in Phase-contrast and on fine mounted diatoms. I don’t have both as brightfield versions.

I
It seems like I'm moving away from Nikon CF after equipping my Olympus Vanox with PlanApos, but if I had continued to invest in Nikon I would definitely had bought a 60x 1.40 planapo. My impression is that there has been more of those on the market over the last year or so, for quite decent prices.

Do you prefer the Olympus Splanapos over the Nikon CF/CFN objectives?
In my case I’ll move away from the finite Zeiss objectives. Not that I don’t like them, but in my opinion they are not as good as the Nikons, especially the Colour correction. But the Nikons admittedly are newer.
The great thing about them is the possibility for direct projection on the camera sensor. The image section of my Nikon 60 0.95 corresponds to the section of a Zeiss 40x objective with an 8x eyepiece.


best regards to all,
Simon

[viktor j nilsson]

Hey guys,

It seems like I'm moving away from Nikon CF after equipping my Olympus Vanox with PlanApos, but if I had continued to invest in Nikon I would definitely had bought a 60x 1.40 planapo. My impression is that there has been more of those on the market over the last year or so, for quite decent prices.

Do you prefer the Olympus Splanapos over the Nikon CF/CFN objectives?
In my case I’ll move away from the finite Zeiss objectives. Not that I don’t like them, but in my opinion they are not as good as the Nikons, especially the Colour correction. But the Nikons admittedly are newer.
The great thing about them is the possibility for direct projection on the camera sensor. The image section of my Nikon 60 0.95 corresponds to the section of a Zeiss 40x objective with an 8x eyepiece.


best regards to all,
Simon

Oddly enough, I am moving to the Olympus short-barrel PlanApos. I lucked upon a Vanox AH with DIC for a great price, and started to collect short-barrel PlanApos mostly because I was interested to see if the DIC would work better with objectives from the same era than with my Nikon CFs. Plus they play nicely with the photo setup that came with my scope.

The Olympus short-barrel PlanApos are really good. Not quite as good as Nikon CF PlanApo's, but not too far off, and a whole lot more affordable. I now have the complete set, and I've only paid between $44 and $129 each. So my choice has more to do with convenience and price, rather than optical performance. I don't think that it's a path that I would recommend anyone else to take. It also feels nice to equip the Vanox with the best from it's era.

I've actually also picked up two short-barrel silicone immersion objectives, a 100x 1.25 and a 40x 1.00 for $45 and $125, respectively. Based on the RI of silicone oil, my hypothesis is that they will perform better with water mounts than oil objectives. Very curious to try them out; Nikon never made any during the CF era.

Here's the PlanApo lineup:

[dolmadis]

Oddly enough, I am moving to the Olympus short-barrel PlanApos. I lucked upon a Vanox AH with DIC for a great price, and started to collect short-barrel PlanApos mostly because I was interested to see if the DIC would work better with objectives from the same era than with my Nikon CFs. Plus they play nicely with the photo setup that came with my scope.

The Olympus short-barrel PlanApos are really good. Not quite as good as Nikon CF PlanApo's, but not too far off, and a whole lot more affordable. I now have the complete set, and I've only paid between $44 and $129 each. So my choice has more to do with convenience and price, rather than optical performance. I don't think that it's a path that I would recommend anyone else to take. It also feels nice to equip the Vanox with the best from it's era.

I was not acquainted with these until your post but as expected they are referred to on Alan Wood's site.

http://www.alanwood.net/olympus/microsc ... tives.html

The “short mount” (36.65 mm parfocal) and the “long mount” (approximately 42.5 mm parfocal) objectives were intended for microscopes of the BH era (AH, BH, CH, CK, IMT) and earlier models. For photomicrography, they should be used with the FK photo eyepieces. The eyepieces for viewing do not include an “L” in their designation, for example Bi WF10×.

[viktor j nilsson]

Yup, Alan Wood's site is such a treasure trove. The most complete catalogue of SB objectives is this one:
http://www.alanwood.net/downloads/olymp ... optics.pdf

They are said to be corrected up to a field number of 29mm! Would be cool to find a UW head for my Vanox...

[Duke]

Oddly enough, I am moving to the Olympus short-barrel PlanApos.

I've come the opposite way , well, almost.
Old JIS Olympus Plan objectives was the first "imported" objectives for me (eastern bloc LOMO/Zeiss/PZO/Meopta etc. doesn't count), and I did like them.
Some photos using LOMO MFN-11 trinocular from
Olympus JIS Plan 4x 0.10 160/-

Olympus JIS Plan 10x 0.25 160/-

Larger image
Olympus JIS Plan 20x 0.40 160/0.17

Larger image
Olympus JIS Plan 40x 0.465 160/0.17

Larger image

The great thing for me about them was, that lateral chromatic aberration (LCA) is about 1-1.2%, and LOMO MFN-11 at optovar position 1.1x on trinocular has -0.85% LCA compensation, so it was almost equal to first generation "Nikon CF". Then, I've had a few newer Olympus SPlan, but I was disappointed by them, so, eventually (after trying everything else Leitz,Zeiss etc.), I've ended up with Nikon.

[viktor j nilsson]

Oddly enough, I am moving to the Olympus short-barrel PlanApos.

I've come the opposite way , well, almost.
Old JIS Olympus Plan objectives was the first "imported" objectives for me (eastern bloc LOMO/Zeiss/PZO/Meopta etc. doesn't count), and I did like them.
Some photos using LOMO MFN-11 trinocular from
Olympus JIS Plan 4x 0.10 160/-Olympus_JIS_Plan_4x_010_preview.jpg
Larger image
Olympus JIS Plan 20x 0.40 160/0.17Olympus_JIS_Plan_20x_040_preview.jpg
Larger image
Olympus JIS Plan 40x 0.465 160/0.17Olympus_JIS_Plan_40x_065.jpg
Larger image

The great thing for me about them was, that lateral chromatic aberration (LCA) is about 1-1.2%, and LOMO MFN-11 at optovar position 1.1x on trinocular has -0.85% LCA compensation, so it was almost equal to first generation "Nikon CF". Then, I've had a few newer Olympus SPlan, but I was disappointed by them, so, eventually (after trying everything else Leitz,Zeiss etc.), I've ended up with Nikon.

Interesting to hear about the Olympus/Lomo match! I've never seen any data on the LCA of Olympus SB objectives. Where did you find this information? Do you know how similar the SB and LB objectives are to each other? They say that FK and NFK eyepieces aren't interchangeable. But I've briefly tried some WHK10X eyepieces with the SB objectives, and they seemed to be fairly close.

I haven't tested the Splans, but I've heard that they perform similarly to Nikon CFN, and I honestly don't really like my CFN plan 20x and CFN plan 40x objectives. Okay resolution, but too much CA for my taste. I prefer the Olympus SB PlanApo's over the Nikon CFN's any day. I would guess that I would feel the same about the Splan's.

[dolmadis]

I did a very quick search from ebay uk but I did not find any Olympus PlanApo short mount available. Or did I get my search string wrong? (Olympus PlanApo (add ?x and 0.?) microscope objective).

BR, John

[viktor j nilsson]

Two that I can find right now:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/OLYMPUS-4X-0-1 ... 4170083741

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Olympus-Plan-A ... 4135149761

The 4x and 10x are easiest to find. They are also fantastic. The 40x 0.95 was the hardest, but I was very lucky to find one for $45 and it performs exceptionally well, although it has a few small marks on the front lens.

[dolmadis]

Thanks for the examples, appreciated. Best, John

[Duke]

Interesting to hear about the Olympus/Lomo match! I've never seen any data on the LCA of Olympus SB objectives. Where did you find this information? Do you know how similar the SB and LB objectives are to each other? They say that FK and NFK eyepieces aren't interchangeable. But I've briefly tried some WHK10X eyepieces with the SB objectives, and they seemed to be fairly close.

The first thing I usually do for any microscope objective I buy is "test of the field", what i call taking a picture with the proper stage micrometer scale. Then, I use that picture to calibrate images, but also it's very convenient to assess aberrations for correction in post-processing during DN development, this where I "measure" CA and field curvature of the objectives. I store this corrections as profile (i.e. in darktable), so, then it is convenient to batch-develop DN photos from different objectives.
As I recall SPlan (DIN) had substantially more LCA (>1.5%) than older JIS, by that wasn't the main problem, rather the LCA inconsistency is what drove me off.
However, you can really see CA only on large fields (~25mm), and there's no conventional way to get FOV as large using olympus projectives. I don't think that relatively low negative residual chromatic aberration will be that obvious on small fields (~18mm), so you wouldn't probably notice it by the naked eye, but will be visible on the photos.

[Soki]

Oddly enough, I am moving to the Olympus short-barrel PlanApos. I lucked upon a Vanox AH with DIC for a great price, and started to collect short-barrel PlanApos mostly because I was interested to see if the DIC would work better with objectives from the same era than with my Nikon CFs. Plus they play nicely with the photo setup that came with my scope.

The Olympus short-barrel PlanApos are really good. Not quite as good as Nikon CF PlanApo's, but not too far off, and a whole lot more affordable. I now have the complete set, and I've only paid between $44 and $129 each. So my choice has more to do with convenience and price, rather than optical performance. I don't think that it's a path that I would recommend anyone else to take. It also feels nice to equip the Vanox with the best from it's era.

Now thats comprehensible. There seem to be some Olympus Vanox with DIC for sale out there, because they were probably used often with DIC. This DIC looks really awesome, especially in combination with SPlanapos.
Congrats for the great deals! The prices for these lenses are really low. The standard Splanapos are much more expensive.

I choose the PZO Pluta DIC manly because of the comparable low price and it’s flexibility. The results with the Nikon CFN objectives are pretty good:

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC8k7VLFX1rK40TCciz9DdHA

but the popular Systems (Zeiss, Nikon, Olympus, Leitz/Leica,..) outperform the Pluta. The possibility to use nearly every finite (maybe infinite as well?) objective out there is pretty unique, but of course will not deliver the same results as perfect matched prism designed for a specific objective.

I have the Nikon CF M Plan 20 SLWD and the 40 ELWD and they are great objectives, but they are far from being CA-free. I had the Nikon CF Plan 40 0,70 and was pretty disappointed. The image wasn’t satisfying. A very old (but really good and nearly CA-free) CZJ achromat (40 0.65) performed equally, even with direct projection. That’s the reason why I sold it.
My Nikon CF/CFN Planapos however are absolutely mindblowing. I didn’t think a high NA dry objective (60 0.95) can perform so well. I immediately sold my Zeiss Neofluar 60 0.90.
Learned quite a lot through this discussion here, glad this thread evolved this way:)

best regards,
Simon