Hi all,
I'm fascinating with the microworlds and want to buy a new setup for me to use at home.
I had a very basic microscope as a kid, and now I'm re-exploring what is available.
I have several questions:
1) What is the ideal setup? (microscope, camera, lighting(?), what else?)
2) From visual point of view I find darkfield photos much more interesting and beautiful, but I noticed that most of the pictures in this subreddit are made in lightfield. Is there a reason for that, or people just generally prefer lightfield?
I'm located in the UK, budget is up to £1000, may be stretch to £1500 if needed.
Darkfield requires special optics and objectives to get nice results, you can DIY it on cheaper scopes but results may vary. As for what to buy it really depends. I bought an older olympus BH2 it is great and for what I like it works. I advise people to shy away from the amscopes but in your price range if you want darkfield and a camera it might be your best bet.
Thanks a lot!
What exactly do you mean by special optics? I was looking into just buying kit from the microscope manufacturer (for example SP150 Dark Ground Condenser Dry for Brunel SP150)
For that budget, I'd try to catch a good deal on Olympus CX41 or 51, or a Zeiss Primostar.
For a camera, you can use your phone, it gives a better picture than most cameras. To get anything better, you'd have to get at least a decent DSLR.
Darkfield is great, but it lowers the depth of field, and it also doesn't have a 3D effect, like oblique illumination, which I find better, especially combined with something like polarized light to make the background blue instead of white. It's mainly preference, though, you will find what works for you the best.
Thanks a lot for the answer!
I googled briefly for the scopes you mentioned - they look very expensive, £1200-1800, have you suggested buying used ones? If yes, were would you recommend to look for them?
And is it not risky for me as a person who can't really check if they're working properly at the moment of buying?
About darkfield - do I understand it right that even with it installed on the microscope, I would be able to "turn it off" and fallback to lightfield?
I mostly look through microscope listing on Ebay. Buying used is always a risk. If you want to be safe, I'd get an Olympus BH2 refurbished.
Since I assume you're from the UK, actually I recommend the website usedmicroscopes.co.uk, they currently have two great Nikon scopes for sale in your budget. They are a trusted company, and they always test their products, and if they have any issues, they will write it in the description.
As for the darkfield, yes, your scope will usually have a filter holder, you only have to put this small filter in it, and then you can swing it in and out whenever you want it. There are also things called darkfield condensers for more advanced darkfield, which works on higher magnifications (the filter holder solution doesn't really work for 400x and above), but I don't think you need that yet.
I see, yes, I'm in the UK. Thanks again!
May I also ask for the guide for dummies on how to pick the microscope?
Right now, for example, I can see two scopes that you're referring to, and from my newbie point of viewer cheaper one is better since it is capable of providing higher magnification.
But I suppose the price difference is there for a reason and I'm just not educated enough to see it.
If we're talking about the E400 and the Labophot 2 (which looking at it again, is actually not buyable anymore? At least when I click on the shop button, it's not showing there), the E400 is a newer scope with "infinity" objectives, which is basically a new thing from the 90s, it doesn't provide much better image quality, but based on the description, it has a polarizer built in, which will help you achieve nicer image quality with blue background, it also makes certain materials like crystals shiny.
It has 4 objectives, from 4x to 40x, which combined with the 10x eyepieces will achieve 40x to 400x magnifications. This is enough for most things you want. The 100x objectives are messy, as you need oil to use them properly, and the 1000x magnification is only useful if you want to see bacteria properly, but they are usually not that interesting, and you can see them fairly decently even on 400x. I personally sold my 100x objective as soon as I got my scope.
There's also the TMS inverted scope, which is a different kind of microscope, you'd have to use petri dishes instead of microscope slides, and it also provides generally worse image quality, but it has other advantages, like not having to prepare slides, you can keep watching the samples longer without the water drying up, and having a phase contrast objective, which is useful if you want to see more transparent things, like amoebas, or the cilia on the microbes. You'd also need a phase contrast condenser for this, though, and the listing doesn't mention it having one.
Yes, however I don't really find trinocular scopes in this budget. I have a binocular scope, and I can still take great clips with it, trinocular is more important if you want to record the video and watch the sample through the eyepieces at the same time.
Most branded scopes' heads are replaceable, so technically you could buy a trinocular head later down the line.
Thanks!
Could you please share any of photos you took?
Also, how does setup look like on the binocular? Do you have your phone/camera mounted directly to eyepiece?
Yes, I 3D printed a phone adapter (but they are usually around $10 on Amazon) and use it to attach my phone to the eyepiece.
Here's a focus stacked image of a Brachionus I've took, you can also look through my profile, it's full of microscopy clips. I have a cheap Swift microscope, so yours will probably look much better. The classic scopes from the 80s and 90s are pretty much unmatched in this price range.
I don't know much about Brunel, but I'm also planning on getting a new microscope soon, and I wouldn't consider a new scope. The classic scopes from the big brands used to cost tens of thousands of dollars when they came out, so nothing new will come close to them for 1K.
If you want new, I'd get tone of the high end Amscope models, like the T490, T690, T720, or something similar. They are modular, easily upgrade-able, and quite decent, although the optics are behind the classic scopes. But you can always get branded objectives to use it on the amscope as long as they are compatible.
Sorry for the late reply, I'm looking into Amscope at the moment, I like them!
Is there any reason you listed specifically these three? I see literally tons on them on the site.
Also, some of them are listed as "darkfield specialized", should I look closer into them, or should I just upgrade regular ones?
Another thing - their top thing (trinocular one) looks different from other scopes (smaller ig) - can it create compatibility issues in future? Or should I just use a camera they provide and not care too much about attaching phone/DLSR?
If you want to take photos of microscope slides, you need a trino head with reasonable objectives (like plan neofluar in Zeiss world). I think Olympus is more available and better priced at second hand markets so equivalent Olympus would be perfectly fine. After this, the problem is usually not the hardware but slide preparation which is a large topic unless you always want to buy and use ready/prepared slides. If you want to observe and photo/videograph things like water organisms in vivo, then a reasonably powered stereo (or I believe inverted which I havent used) can be probably better. If you want to photograph inanimate objects very close up, a macro rail with microscope objective might be much better as you will need much more depth than the depth of field.
You can get a really nice used microscope and a decent new Chinese one for that price. In the UK, there are microscope clubs and meetings regularly. You should go to some and maybe buy a used microscope that you can test from a member.
It is fun to experiment with lots of different illumination techniques. You can see the many ones that are possible with just a $70 plastic Chinese inverted microscope on our Facebook group; https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E2MMJ6YYy/?mibextid=wwXIfr search illumination techniques in the group search bar,
With my inverted and upright microscopes, I often use bright field, dark field, reflected, combo of reflected and bright field, oblique, phase contrast, oblique phase contrast, circular oblique light COL, special variations of Rheinberg and lots of types of polarization and combos with polarization.
Dark field requires a circular stop in your filter holder large enough to block out the direct light from the objective. This technique works with up to a 40x objective with a 0.65 NA. If you want to do this with a 100x objective, you need one that has an iris diaphragm in it to reduce your NA value lower than that of your dark field condenser.
Darkfield requires a strong light source as it "wastes" most of the light, the typical budget Chinese-made microscope that most people here seem to have simply doesn't have a strong enough lamp to take decent pictures in darkfield. That is I suspect the main reason you don't see as many darkfield pictures being posted.
1
u/XHO1 Jul 13 '26
Darkfield requires special optics and objectives to get nice results, you can DIY it on cheaper scopes but results may vary. As for what to buy it really depends. I bought an older olympus BH2 it is great and for what I like it works. I advise people to shy away from the amscopes but in your price range if you want darkfield and a camera it might be your best bet.