Cheap Microscope
- Thread starter tpirovol
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Nick Steele
2500 Club Member
That’s the scope I bought I like it!
Jubei2006
Well-Known Member
Just looked on ebay and they had some good deals on Zeiss, Olympus, and Nikon (but not sure what price range your looking for). Even the old versions of these scopes have amazing clarity vs. the one you have selected. Don't skimp on lenses. I have seen 40 and100 power lenses that are unusable even new. Unfortunately you would have to get an adapter for pictures. Personally I use a Swift Motic with camera and tablet adapter for pictures at work. It's a pretty good scope, but the set up new is around 1500 to 1800 dollars. The Nikons are like 5-6 grand.
EricR
2500 Club Member
Just a thought -- Amazon has decent digital microscopes in $60-$100 price range with LCD displays that are fun for multiple people to view at once,,, plus easy to capture images and transfer to other devices.
Just in case the idea interests you, here's an iPhone pic of the screen w/amphipod I took -- brother-in-law's digital microscope that he paid about $100 for:
Digital Microscope Pic
Just in case the idea interests you, here's an iPhone pic of the screen w/amphipod I took -- brother-in-law's digital microscope that he paid about $100 for:
Digital Microscope Pic
BanjoBandito
Valuable Member
DID SOMEBODY SAY CHEAP!?!?!
This is what I use. Never had an issue, very handy, tiny investment.
This is what I use. Never had an issue, very handy, tiny investment.
EricR
2500 Club Member
Pretty sure it's this one for $109 on Amazon -- 7" LCD, snaps and stores pics and videos, comes with 32 GB so easy to transfer pics/videos to your computer, etc.
*For $60-$80 I see similar ones with smaller, 4.3" LCD display, but I think the larger display is worth it,,, for group viewing
Digital Microscope
EDIT -- definitely consider what Jubei2006 said in post #6 -- consider your goals,,, but this one says up to 1200x mag (allegedly) so seems a little higher than what you mentioned in your first post,,, maybe.
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DaJMasta
Well-Known Member
A cheap one will be fine for low magnification work, but even a couple hundred bucks will get you something you can look at single cell stuff with - you just run into issues with illumination quality without staining or similar. It's also not required to invest (sometimes heavily) in one from the major brands (Zeiss, Nikon, Olympus, Leica, etc.), optical clarity of modern inexpensive optics is just fine, and they will get you good images. The more budget models will likely have little color correction, more small aberrations in the image, lower lighting, and drastically fewer options for advanced imaging techniques, but the basic image quality of normal brightfield work is going to be just fine.
I'd take a look at craigslist or similar, as often people are trying to sell one that would work fine and they can sometimes be heavy/tricky to ship without issue, but for imaging you have a lot of options. You can get a camera that fits where an eyepiece goes to make almost anything work, otherwise you can get a trinocular port for a dedicated camera port on a binocular microscope, or you can get a digital microscope which just plugs into USB or similar.
You want to identify what sort of thing you're looking at and what sort of magnification it actually requires. For a lot of work - down to things you can barely make out as a speck of dust by eye - a stereo microscope (or similar digital microscope) could be a better fit than what most people think of. Something that does 20-50x will give you substantial magnification and plenty for looking at copepods or the like, and usually is easy to have setup, uses overhead/built in lighting (or a flashlight from the side, as I like to do), and will have both enough depth of field and working distance to not really require things like slides and coverslips. That said, if you want to be looking at small algaes or bacteria, you're going to want a compound microscope with a high power objective (>50x, but this is then multiplied by the eyepiece to give you the full magnification), lighting that comes from behind the sample (below in an upright microscope design), and you will need at least a few slides, a few coverslips, and appropriate immersion media for your highest power objectives if they need it.
It's a whole rabbit hole you can go down, but even with an inexpensive scope you should be able to see some detail in the very small if you've picked one suitable for your use case. The one you linked would certainly do the job, but you should be able to spend similar money for a more capable one (with binocular eyepieces or a camera port, for example) if you get something on the used market.
I'd take a look at craigslist or similar, as often people are trying to sell one that would work fine and they can sometimes be heavy/tricky to ship without issue, but for imaging you have a lot of options. You can get a camera that fits where an eyepiece goes to make almost anything work, otherwise you can get a trinocular port for a dedicated camera port on a binocular microscope, or you can get a digital microscope which just plugs into USB or similar.
You want to identify what sort of thing you're looking at and what sort of magnification it actually requires. For a lot of work - down to things you can barely make out as a speck of dust by eye - a stereo microscope (or similar digital microscope) could be a better fit than what most people think of. Something that does 20-50x will give you substantial magnification and plenty for looking at copepods or the like, and usually is easy to have setup, uses overhead/built in lighting (or a flashlight from the side, as I like to do), and will have both enough depth of field and working distance to not really require things like slides and coverslips. That said, if you want to be looking at small algaes or bacteria, you're going to want a compound microscope with a high power objective (>50x, but this is then multiplied by the eyepiece to give you the full magnification), lighting that comes from behind the sample (below in an upright microscope design), and you will need at least a few slides, a few coverslips, and appropriate immersion media for your highest power objectives if they need it.
It's a whole rabbit hole you can go down, but even with an inexpensive scope you should be able to see some detail in the very small if you've picked one suitable for your use case. The one you linked would certainly do the job, but you should be able to spend similar money for a more capable one (with binocular eyepieces or a camera port, for example) if you get something on the used market.
