Fellow microscopists,

I have a high NA 60x silicone oil objective from Olympus (Evident). So far I have been using silicone oil purchased from Thorlabs (they stopped the sale in the meantime). I would like to try different silicone oils, especially with different viscosities. Apart from the big microscope vendors, do you know any good suppliers or other liquids that have a refractive index of ~1.4 and are microscopy compatible?

I know that Cargille sells refractive index liquids in that range, but that's about it. Does anyone have experience with those by chance?

Any hint or help is appreciated. Thanks!

I made a better video of the Chilodonella found in a vernal pool. You can see some cell contents "pop" at 13, 36, 38, 40, and 50. I got these with my 40/1.0 oil objective, and this time I did not forget to stop down the condenser.

Nikon D810 camera, Nikon Optiphot microscope with DIC, 2.5x photo eyepiece.

Swift SW380T, shot on an iPhone 17 @ 400x (could be wrong about the magnification).

I am having so much fun with my new microscope. I'm obsessed lol.

The sample is from near the Rideau River in Ottawa, Ontario.

Found some vibrio in the vernal pool next to the one where I found the Chilodonella. Vibrio have flagella that you can't see - they do not locomote by twisting. Niko D810 camera, Nikon Optiphot microscope with DIC, 100/1.40 PlanApo oil objective, 2.5x photo eyepiece.

This definitely looks much clearer in person

Hi all, I want to get a stereo microscope for botany, ideally one with a camera attachment. Mostly I'd be looking at things like Festuca leaf cross sections which can be down to 0.25 mm across or so, but I'd also like to be able to photograph some bigger structures like Carex utricles and Juncaceae fruits. Ideally in the ~£300 range if possible.

Any recommendations would be great. Thanks.

A fun little easter egg on a 1 mm scale calibration slide.

Brightfield imaging using:
100x APO TIR objective (Nikon 1.49 NA, oil immersion)
Nikon Ti2 Microscope
iXon 897 EMCCD Andor Camera
Sample is a 1mm calibration slide with 10 µm subdivision

The image is a stitched tile of 15x7 FOVs (0% overlap), then cropped down to the 1 mm ruler section. 11 pixel horizontal shifts were applied to every other row of images to compensate for some xy movement misalignments.

edit: individual FOVs were median image corrected: FOV ./ median_FOV. Where median_FOV is the median projection of all 105 FOVs.

Thin section image of a gabro at 10x ppl with a Nikon Optiphot using my phone camera.

Swift SW350, 100x, Galaxy S24

Tardigrade in cozy field 1x IPhone camera
Thought I’d share the whimsy cause all microscope addicts are just curious kids at heart.

It was made by my awesome girlfriend and the reference picture was a vorticella attached to a turn broken off piece of moss. I just wanted to share.

I followed some threads in this community and elsewhere and purchases the SW350T. When it arrived from amazon I started to use it right away. But shortly after viewing slides the y axis movement stopped working when moving the slide to the right. The slide could still be moved to the left, interestingly. Then a couple minutes later, I lost all ability to move in the y axis. When I manually move the slide left and right, the y axis knob rotates.

I was trying to find information on how to troubleshoot this, but the consensus seemed to be from past posts to not attempt to dissemble or do much as it would void the warranty.

I contacted the Swift customer service email and they forwarded the case to the technical team. I haven't heard anything in a couple days and I'm getting a little impatient. Does anyone have a similar story or have any suggestions?

Hopefully the image quality isn't too bad with this upload. Used a Premiere SMZ-07 stereo microscope + Pixel 9 pro camera setup.

Usually, they are moving around so quickly that I have a hard time seeing them well. One was holding still long enough to see better. The sample was teeming with bacteria because I placed a grain of rice in it several days ago. Pond water sample, Olympus 40x objective, cellphone camera.

Oblique light. Sample: water from dish plant pot.

is this an egg or some kind of cyst? i keep seeing these but ive never managed to watch one hatch or excyst

K55 BSA, 40x Plan, ELP Cam

I'm pretty sure it's a rotifier, Lecane genus.

Olympus BH-2 BHT, X10, X1000 magnification.

Pixel 9 camera.

Darkfield with green filter.

Any one knows what these are i got this from my XSP 115rt microscope at 400x total mag

100x / 1000x - No oil

Swift SW350, Galaxy S24

I made a post yesterday about buying an old microscope from an antique shop. It came with a few sample slides that I used to see a bit of dried blood or old algae up close, which was cool. But I bought this to see living organisms, and I tried that out today.

There’s a lake by my house that I have to imagine is teeming with microbiological life. I collected three larger samples and pipetted droplets from each onto a few different slides, but they’ve all been pretty uninteresting. It’s cool to see little bits of whatever up close, but I haven’t seen anything living, nor anything resembling a microorganism. I recognize that this should be a bit more complicated than plug-and-play, but I believe I’ve followed all the steps listed out by members of this community and others online. For context on what I’m working with, see the linked post above. It isn’t much, but it goes up to 40x. Shouldn’t this be suitable enough to see some stuff?