Optical system in AZ100 Microscope?

[Pawel]

Does anyone know what optical system is used in AZ100 Multizoom microscopes?. I just mean to attach the lenses to the camera body. is it INFINITY like CFI? It seems that there is a TUBE LENS lens in the 'head', so it's rather an infinity.

P.s. I know what these microscopes are for and I don't want you to explain the purpose of these microscopes, what are the lenses, and that it is similar to the SMZ stereo etc! etc! I'm interested in the optics system

[Pau]

Infinite corrected, but not equal to CFI:
- The monocular phototube has a tube lens of 150mm and 0.6X nominal magnification and 11mm FN
- The trinocular is less clear, although its photoport also has 0.6X FN 11 while the eyepiece tubes are 1X and 22mm FN

It is meant for a C-mount 2/3" camera (11mm diagonal) like Nikon Digital Sight DS-Fi2

I use it with PLI 2.5X or 2X projective on Canon APSC. Direct projection with a 200mm tube lens and no zoom body dos not vignette and shows excellent center but lots of image degradation towards the periphery, so the quality image circle is pretty limited.

Do you have one of this monsters?

[Scarodactyl]

You can safely assume pretty much any high end modular microscope from this century is infinity corrected. That's been true of stereo microscopes and photomacroscopes (like this one) for longer, with at least most systems being infinity corrected since the 70s or so.
If you're thinking about a photomacroscope system with interchangeable objectives the Leica Z6 is sometomes available affordably and has better specs (at least in terms of field coverage, resolution per mag and working distance--thr AZ100 does have other advantages). Plus, if you want to stick with a Nikon theme to your scopes, you can connect the Z6 objective to an Eclipse series head since they both use 200mm tube lenses and you'll get superior performance to the official Leica solution.

[Pawel]

Do you have one of this monsters?

I have lenses for this microscope.
Plan Apo 0.5x N.A 0.5 WD 54m
Plan Apo 1x / 0.1 WD 35mm
Plan Apo 4x / 0.4 Wd 20mm

[Pawel]

and lambda plates 1/4 ;-)

[Scarodactyl]

These can also be hooked up to the Leica Z series with some reported success, though I have not tried it or seen any example photos. Iirc RAFcamera sells an adapter for this purpose.

[Pawel]

if I do not make use of them - I will just sell them, but I feel sorry for them because they costed a lot ;-(

[Scarodactyl]

If you're thinking about using them directly for macro work sans zoom body there have been a few threads about them here. There doesn't seem to be a solution that gives the results people are looking for from a 4x/0.4 but on the zoom body it's a nice system for its intended purpose.

[Pawel]

PAU,
please..., you have had to deal with this microscope, tell me if the items marked with arrows are Lambda Plates 1/4 or are they ordinary lens CAPS?

they do not resemble 'postarianization filters', but have some color coating, so maybe they are lambda plates.

and...
what does the lambda plate look like up to 0.5x? I cannot see any 'plate lambda' on all photos of the AZ100 microscope from the internet; - /
?

[Pau]

Most AZ objectives are corrected to need an optical window *, usually it is a 1/4 lambda plate for avoiding reflections with epi pol illumination (like the Zeiss Antiflex system) but they also can be a plain glass optical window, so to be sure about what you have, just test it with linear polarizers.

* all plan apos except the 0.5X and some plan fluors

[Pawel]

* all plan apos except the 0.5X and some plan fluors

0,5x also ;-)

[Ichthyophthirius]

As Pau said, the 4x and 5x NEED the lambda/4 plates to correct spherical aberration (they have high NA and designed with the cap, so they would image poorly without the cap present). The 2x is designed to work without a cap.

Several people here had poor results by just attaching one of the AZ objectives to a camera lens. However, I recently got nice results by attaching an AZ 1x Plan Apo to an Olympus SZX16 stereo microscope, right hand light path only (the diameter of the AZ 1x is too small to illuminate both light paths on the SZX16). I got a nice image from the 1.0 zoom setting onwards: correct working distance, fully colour corrected and completely plan.

So there is nothing magical about the AZ100 zoom body. But somehow there needs to be a $6000 zoom body between AZ 1x and the tube lens or a certain distance between AZ 1x and tube lens for it to work, something that we haven't been able to replicate with a camera lens, yet.

Rgeards, Ichty

[Duke]

Several people here had poor results by just attaching one of the AZ objectives to a camera lens.
So there is nothing magical about the AZ100 zoom body. But somehow there needs to be a $6000 zoom body between AZ 1x and the tube lens or a certain distance between AZ 1x and tube lens for it to work, something that we haven't been able to replicate with a camera lens, yet.

Is there a links or images of such tests?
If you get a great results using IC stereomicroscope, it suggests there is indeed nothing particularly special about zoom system or tubelens on AZ100, so it should work with properly stepped down telezoom (18-200, 28-300mm) photo objective, with addition of the iris diaphragm on the front lens, since zoom-system is simply stopping the exit pupil of the objective and limiting aperture of the system. Conveniently, AZ-objectives, likewise stereomicroscope objectives (and unlike compound microscope objectives), should have an aperture plane in a few mm of the exit lens, so it would be ideal to mount telezoom to AZ-objective through adapter with diaphragm inside.

[Ichthyophthirius]

Hi,

I don't have an image, it was that bad. I had the same experience as Pau had viewtopic.php?f=25&t=32061&p=197732&hilit=az100#p197732

But I don't think it is an insurmountable problem. Someone will evenually find a suitable camera lens setup. Also, the objectives are very heavy and mounting them to front filter threads is cumbersome.

[Pau]

Quoting myself in another thread

The 0.5X has a modest 0.05NA, AFAIK it can mount a 1/4 plate but do not need it* to avoid spherical aberration like the others do. The 1X degrades but is usable while the 4X 0.40 is useless without it.

This is clear at the 2007 "technical handbook"
p. 6

p. 14