I’m considering buying a microscope in the new year - mainly to be used for examining and photographing things like plants and insects as a hobby. I see that ‘handheld’ microscopes are pretty cheap, but would still prefer something more stable and robust - so initially looking at a compound microscope. Happy to work with preparing slides if needed.
My main questions are:
Is it better to buy a digital microscope, or an optical one plus a smartphone adaptor? I see the kind of digital scopes in my price range (say $400-800) having a lower resolution than my phone, but there may be other optical issues with using an adapter that I don’t know about.
How easy is it to switch in a polarising filter to look at things like crystals and fibres in each type (digital/optical)? And apart from a polariser, which other filters (if any) are most useful for the ‘nature hobbyist’?
I understand that, like astronomy, any claims of higher magnification don’t translate into a particular microscope being ‘better’, but I’d be prepared to sacrifice some quality in order to be able to achieve a decent mag (e.g. 400x plus).
If you think of me as having the experience and enthusiasm of a varsity freshman, but with slightly greater financial resources, that’s probably accurate enough.
For things like plants and insects–where you don’t need extreme magnification–you are better off with a stereo/dissecting microscope. (400x is super overkill for that.) Some are trinocular, having a camera mount that you can use while still looking through it. This looks like a good option at the top of your price range.
Hm–I see your price ceiling is $800, not $400. For that, you could get a same or better trinoc and a pretty good one of the cameras they carry. Or a trinoc, a cheaper digital camera, and a pretty good student traditional scope for if you really do want to look at individual cells on mounted slides made from tiny slivers of plants and insects.
There are excellent wonders to behold throughout the size spectrum below what you can see with the naked eye. I think you basically have to add several low magnification devices in the 3 to 20 X range, available in excellent quality for a small incremental increase in your total budget. There are also great books out there about how they work and how to use them optimally.
Having digital capability, I think, depends on two issues. 1) if you need vision correction for astigmatism, getting your glasses into the optical path without making things more difficult can be a big problem, which using a computer screen fixes; 2) keeping images of what you saw.
my nephew (entomologist) chose a compound digital unit for working at home … he never looked back. since you’re a hobbyist … i’d suggest the following website to help offer issues to consider:
My god. You bought it from Keyence? Don’t their salespeople hound you mercilessly until death? I bend over backwards to find competitors just because those people are so much WORK to know.
