New Mitutoyo apo 10x

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leanderborg220
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Joined: Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:53 am

New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by leanderborg220 »

Finally I found a new one for good price and bought it immediately.
Had to pay $180 import tax and $63 to have it shipped it to my country :?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mitutoyo-M-p ... 2749.l2648

Hoping for the best.

Adalbert
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Adalbert »

congrats and enjoy it :-)

leanderborg220
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Joined: Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:53 am

Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by leanderborg220 »

Adalbert wrote:
Tue Oct 06, 2020 6:42 am
congrats and enjoy it :-)
Thanks mate :wink:

leanderborg220
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by leanderborg220 »

What do you think? should I return this back? I have no equipment yet to test sharpness.
I do not know exactly if this is normal or not. It is only visible when shining a flashlight and look through the front lens or using direct sunlight . There I can see some very tiny specs that kind of reflect. I do not think it is delamination as it has no delamination pattern around the edges. It really looks like some very tiny specs of dust on the back of the front element. Could be normal but I don`t know exactly as I have no other mitu to compare it to. btw for some reason the inside of the package where it was packed was dusty kind of it was sitting somewhere for very long time accumulating dust and I used air to clean it.
It is visible in the first two pictures.
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Chris S.
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Chris S. »

First the good news: I've tested more Mitutoyo objectives than I can count, and inspected all of them visually as a first step. I see nothing unusual or disturbing shown in any of the images you've posted.

Now the bad news: The visual appearance of a Mitutoyo objective tells you very little. I did once receive an objective that looked as if it had been shot blasted, and sent it back without bothering to test it. Other than that event, I've seen ugly-looking Mitutoyos that produced wonderful results, and cosmetically-perfect Mitties that were optical junk.
leanderborg220 wrote:
Wed Oct 14, 2020 3:08 am
I have no equipment yet to test sharpness.
Unfortunately, this is a big problem. Without equipment and a known-good standard for comparison, there is no way to evaluate this lens. And a frightening share of second-hand Mitties are bad--maybe one-third to one-half.

An offer I frequently make to forum members is to have the lens first shipped to me for testing. Then I either return or forward it, depending on results. But being fairly new to the forum, you likely didn't know this. And when I came across your first post in this thread, it appeared that the lens had already been shipped.

Perhaps a forum member within the EU can test this lens for you within your return window? Though I'll warn that a good test is not a trivial exercise. Ideally, testing is done with a flat target having high contrast (I prefer laser-printed paper pasted onto glass), even light that is partially but not completely diffused (you want some specular highlights on the subject, as these tell you a lot), a stacked image containing enough images that focus and field curvature do not affect the results, and nothing whatsoever changing between stacks with the two lenses, except of course the lens itself. Without fairly advanced equipment and technique, this is a tall order.

Good luck! :D

--Chris S.

Adalbert
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Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:09 pm

Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Adalbert »

Hi,
I have two Mitties 20x: a new one and a used one.
The condition of the used one is really bad but it delivers high quality pictures.
So, I would suggest that you take some photographs of the scales, diatoms or test-targets.
e.g.
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=38651&hilit=Test
Best,
ADi

Pau
Site Admin
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Location: Valencia, Spain

Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Pau »

Admin note: Topic moved from General Discussion Forum and Community Announcements forum because the subject fits better in Equipment Discussions
Pau

Lou Jost
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Lou Jost »

Without equipment and a known-good standard for comparison, there is no way to evaluate this lens.
Many forum members are starting to get standardized wafers as resolution targets, and this will give us the ability to test and comapre our objectives against a common standard. I hope this standardization process continues, though the first distributed standard wafer was destroyed in the mail for many of us....

Chris S.
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Chris S. »

Lou Jost wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 11:01 am
Many forum members are starting to get standardized wafers as resolution targets, and this will give us the ability to test and compare our objectives against a common standard.
Lou,

I'm less than optimistic about the usefulness of distributed testing on standardized wafers, for a bunch of reasons that likely belong in a separate thread. But here are two that may apply in this particular case.

A skilled photographer on another continent once asked me to evaluate his lens remotely--I think it was a Mitutoyo 10x, but could not swear to this--based on a test stack he shot. When shooting his stack, he tried hard to match my protocol, so that we could compare images he took with his lens against images I took with mine. In both cases, we used laser-printed white paper, cut out and pasted onto a glass microscope slide. In both cases, we used two continuous light sources, placed at about ten o'clock and two o'clock, from the perspective of the subject. In both cases, we used partial diffusion; enough diffusion to minimize potential for utilized aperture degradation, but partial enough diffusion to leave useful-for-interpretation specular highlights on the grains of laser toner.

When comparing his image with mine, I distinctly saw that his specular highlights were a bit fuzzier than mine. Was this because his lens wasn't as sharp? Or was it that his diffusion was slightly different? Or was there a notable difference in our tube lenses? Or was there a tiny bit of vibration at his end? Etc. I told him that I my rough sense was that he likely had a decent objective, but that I couldn't be completely sure.

This is an example of why distributed testing with a standard target makes alarm bells ring in my head. Distributed testing looks to me like a set of experiments with insufficient controls. Such tests may have the appearance of controlled experiments, but really are not controlled. This may spread misinformation that appears far better grounded than it actually is--a frightening thought.

Let me declare: I'd love to be completely wrong about this.

The above example involved a photographer with lots of experience in high-magnification work. Let's consider the case of a photographer without such experience. With respect to leanderborg220, whose thread this is, I'm making a reasonable guess that the 10x world is new to him. Many of us here have mentored newcomers to this realm, and its very common that their initial efforts are frustrating; their early images are often blurry, and finding the cause(s) of their blur--out of many possible--is often daunting. To me, it seems that asking a person at this stage of the journey to test his/her own lens is asking the unlikely, if not the impossible.

--Chris S.

Lou Jost
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Lou Jost »

I agree, Chris, that someone just starting out can easily miss the non-optical factors that cause unsharp images. I don't think that a beginner will be able to conclude much by comparing his first result with known good results that used the same target. Too much depends on technique rather than optics. However, I think that having a common target (and common protocol as you did) would allow us to make meaningful relative judgements, if we knew from experience that our set-ups were capable of giving good results with most of our optics.

chris_ma
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by chris_ma »

I agree that it's hard to compare images, what a test target could help with is to get a good comparison guideline for "overall system performance", that is, lens, lighting, stray light, mounting, camera sensor etc.

even there it will have it's limitations (like a setup which tests well on a wafer might perform not as well on a particular subject), but it might help people to find out if they are doing something fundamentally wrong (of course finding out what it is that is wrong probably takes some experience again)
chris

Macro_Cosmos
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Macro_Cosmos »

There's one way to standardise the testing to eliminate lighting factors. Because of lighting differences and what-not, mentioned above, the results can't be exchangeable. It can be somewhat representative, but not conclusive.

Coaxial epi-illumination should be used. Find a way to mount the same model of torch (easy actually, I can design an adaptor).
For the tube lens, the clone CMH-200 or ITL200.
Then we use the same wafer.
For coaxial epi, we can all use the Olumpus U-KMAS, or build something with thorlabs parts.

That said, none of these are cheap. Expect to pay $400-$1000 for an adequate setup.

Otherwise, we'll just have to try and match everything, including the procedure.

On top of all that, many modern cameras are known to "bake the raw files". Simply dialling sharpening to 0 likely isn't adequate. If we really want more control, the same industrial camera should be used. Doesn't need to be an expensive model. If that's the case, cheap surplus coaxial epi modules can be had for around $100-$200. However, most want to use aps-c or full frame with these objectives, so that won't work :cry:

It's the law of diminishing returns. To have more factors controlled, more money and time must be spent.

Lou Jost
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Lou Jost »

I think the real purpose of shared targets is not to do super-controilled experiments. It is to provide users with benchmarks to judge the quality of their setup. If a beginner knew that experts were regularly resolving x lines per mm on those resolution targets with some optic and lighting, then he or she could judge the quality of their setup and optic. And if someone were regularly acheiving the norm for several objectives, and then tests a new objective which falls significantly below the norm, he or she would know something is wrong with the optic. I think almost none of us are interested in perfect control, but a very useful amount of information can emerge if we all standardize on a target, especially one that has calibrated line spacing.

Macro_Cosmos
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Macro_Cosmos »

Lou Jost wrote:
Fri Oct 16, 2020 6:51 am
I think almost none of us are interested in perfect control, but a very useful amount of information can emerge if we all standardize on a target, especially one that has calibrated line spacing.
Yeah, I agree. Would be unreasonable to expect someone new to be able to DIY some sort of perfectly controlled setup too. Even though the first batch was crunched by rollers, many parts are still usable. Rik and several others unfortunately saw a very extreme case, the thing being turned into dozens of bits. Most had it halved or quartered. Many got theirs after a whopping 3 months, when it's supposed to be "10 working days", which we paid for. Utterly unacceptable even with that virus in play. 3 months is slower than sea freight shipping. I don't think the blame lies on Australia. I ordered some heavy stuff from China and Japan, sent via sea shipping. They both arrived in 7 weeks. I was told that most of the envelopes arrived in the USA within 2 weeks, so the blame is solely on USPS and myself for not doing research into their (savage) handling of letters. :oops:

I'm still looking for the same wafer, it's not showing up anymore which is annoying. However, I've seen wafers made by the same company with that "B" logo which is perfect for resolution from 5x-100x (and beyond), as 5-20x with lower (<0.6) NA will render the fine lines behind the logo as mush. Might have to make some compromises, but I'm sure that wafer will show up eventually.

Lou Jost
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Re: New Mitutoyo apo 10x

Post by Lou Jost »

The thing that was special about that wafer was the test patterns. That's what we most need to make this useful. I hope we can find something like that again. B+W makes some, and I bought one from a forum member; maybe that is an option for some of us.

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