In high school I had bought an old second-hand Zeiss microscope and was fascinated with what I could observe. Loved zoology in college and the opportunity to find even more fascinating stuff.
Then life interferred and kept me busy with work and other hobbies. Now I’d like to get one of the scopes that can hook up to my computer’s USB port, one with a built-in digital camera, I guess. I can just imagine how interesting things will look on my 19" LCD screen.
Googling through all the ones available, find it difficult to know what to get. I don’t want a toy, but don’t want to get up in the thosand dollar range either. Because of one bad eye, I don’t need a binocular one either.
I would expect one with magnifications of 40X to 200X would suffice for what I want. Probably won’t need oil imersion lens. I expect that range would be fine for blood cells, some bacteria, etc. Or would I be better with one going to 400X?
How does one evaluate the quality of the lenses in inexpensive scopes? Or doesn’t one.?
Any suggestions for something in, oh, say, the $300-400 range? Or would that be wasting money if their quality is too poor?
Gee, thanks cj, that’s exactly what i’m looking for. Can you ship me one to keep a few months to be sure I like it?
Astro & samclem, those sound intersting. I looked at the QX5 in my search but thought it was just a toy, but after reading the Amazon reviews, I’m astonished. Sounds like the perfect thing to get started with, and at that price, it certainly is a bargain.
Yes, you have a live view of the subject with the QX3. There is no eyepiece.
I have one - it’s certainly more than a plaything, but it is rather let down by a couple of factors:
-It’s a CMOS webcam with a microscope built on the front lens; the image quality and resolution are reasonable, but not great.
-The user interface software is atrocious - but you have to use it; you can access the camera itself as an ordinary Windows webcam, but in order to control the illumination, you have to use the software, which is the worst tellytubby-style interface I have ever had the misfortune to use; it’s not so much the childishly coloured soft-look interface, but the fact that mousing over or clicking anything makes one of a selection of truly annoying sounds, which can’t be turned off (I was hoping I’d find them as wav files in a folder somewhere and be able to overwrite them with silence, but alas, they’re embedded in the executable.
Hmm, that certainly gives me pause. Fortunately, one of my speakers with the level control is within arm’s reach, so I could just turn the sound off. But if the rest of the interface is that goofy, it may not be worth it.
The price sure is right for the QX5, though, so may think about trying it, as the next step up for a better scope jumps to more than $300.
It may be that for the QX5 they have done something better with the interface than they did with the QX3 (as well as, I would hope, upgraded the sensor resolution)
For the record, the QX3 interface looks like this (the subject is a fossil crinoid stem, end view, at the lowest magnification, BTW) and sounds like this.
Sufferin’ suggatosh, that’s enough to drive you up the wall all right.
I am coming pretty close to getting this scope as it really seems to have what I want, albeit the extra cost. I think I’m going to get serious about getting involved in microscopy again.
