🔬 019 - Buying ADVICE for microscopes - important features | Amateur science

so hello and welcome you are interested in amateur microscopy you would like to buy yourself a microscope and you don't know which one so you google around a little bit you check Amazon maybe you check eBay or other online shops you discover a microscope that you like you want to check if it's a good one so you post a question in a forum and then you're overwhelmed with a whole bunch of messages from other people that tell you why the microscope is not good or why it is good and there's a big debate and you're left more confused than you actually started off with so at the point of this video tutorial is is to clarify a few points and yeah and to make a little bit microscope choice a little bit easier because I think there are not a lot of options anyway and most microscopes actually share all of the features that you need as an amateur microscopist so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna step you through now the most important criteria so that you can start to select away and I have to be very honest with you especially with microscopes a lot is a question of taste the best microscope well that's the one that you're gonna use most often and the one that you personally like a lot that's the best microscope okay but I'm gonna start off anyway in a more objective way haha no pun intended and I'm going to tell you some of the important points here so let's start off actually prepared a little a little board here the most single most important criterion is is does the microscope adhere to the 160 millimeter dia n standard if it does not adhere to this standard then it's I disqualified right from the beginning okay this is a very common standard and this means that the objectives of all these microscopes that have this standard are interchangeable now there is also a somewhat more rare 170 millimeters standard that's also okay but this one is definitely much more common some microscopes also have so-called infinity of objectives that's again a different standard and I would say if you get yourself a microscope with infinity objectives well then you definitely on this because these are very high-end microscopes but anything which does not at least have 160 millimeter dia and standard is I reject out of hand because all microscopes that have the standard have at least a minimum quality and now I'm going to explain you a little bit how this actually works and what I have over here is you've got to get yourself an objective and if you read the numbers over here you can see that there is a small 160 written on there and this actually indicates that it adheres to the standard so that is basically the so-called I would say the single most important criterion okay now concerning the objectives themselves okay I'm just going to use this educational microscope here and as an example concerning these objectives themselves which one should you get okay and also here I have a certain recommendation and I've already filled it out on the other side over here get yourself objectives with a 4 X 10 X and 40 X magnification that is the minimum and - sometimes they come with also a hundred eggs oil immersion objective many a microscopes are equipped with those when you want to buy it my advice is is honestly if you want to sell save yourself some money don't get this one because it's actually a relatively specialized objective but get yourself rather trite and ask the company if you can get a 60 X objective is so-called a dry objective there are also dry objectives this means that basically they are just yeah and the use is the same because the 100x oil immersion objective means that you have to put some immersion oil directly on the slide it's just gonna show you here is life and you've got to put oil directly on the slide and then you have to rotate the objective into the oil so that means it's covered in oil this is to prevent air from being between the objective and the slide and this can only be done with the so called oil immersion object if they're very expensive to give you a lot of magnification of course but the applications specialized so I would say don't I mean unless you really want to experiment around without I would probably say it's it's it's probably I'd rather invest my money into different things than into an oil immersion objective okay I just wanted to make this clear so 4 X 10 X 40 X my microscope over here the big one and then I have also has a 20 X objective and a 60 X objective as well okay so my advice would be when you buy yourself a microscope I'd rather look how many objectives can you actually mount at the same time the very low-end microscopes allow you to mount only three objectives and this one over here allows you to mount one I can do how many I cannot even see this myself right four objectives over here the big one over here can you can connect five objectives so this is actually am yeah one of the criteria that make the determines a price difference between the microscopes okay so concerning the objectives now there are also different types of harsh less a techno techniques and the common one is so-called bright field bright field microscopy and this means that these objectives are intended to be yeah this light is shining from the bottom and those structures that are dark will appear dark that's obvious right however there's also so-called more expensive phase-contrast objectives which are there to actually increase the contrast of transparent specimens so you actually convert transparent specimens into different degrees of darkness and brightness that's your complex physics is behind that and those objectives are extremely expensive and they really push up the price so generally for amateur microscopists and they we all start off with with a regular bright field so-called achromatic objectives the a chromatic means that there is a color correction to it to prevent chromatic aberration and these achromatic objectives are cheaper than so-called Apple chromatic objectives and those Apple chromatic objectives I would not buy because you don't benefit from them because they are they might be very good obviously they are good they are significantly more expensive mostly used for photographic work if you want to take high quality pictures but if your specimen slide is not of sufficient quality it's also not gonna benefit you okay so get yourself m8 chromatic bright field objectives which are over here generally it is like this that big microscopes already come with low-cost microscopes already come with these because there is no point to have the more expensive objectives anyway so the next feature that I definitely would recommend is the so called mechanical stage the mechanical stage this stage is this part over here where you put the the slide okay and in mechanical stage has two knobs here on the side I'm gonna lift this okay and by turning this you can slide into one dimension and also into the other dimension okay and this helps you to position the slide in very low cost microscopes and field microscopes and also many years ago they had to use that is so called the stage Clips okay which we're just holding the slide in place and then you have to use your fingers to move the slide around and this is actually not so good because you're exerting pressure on the stage this way and this way you're losing the focus because you're focusing by changing the position of the stage okay so mechanical stage is a definite yes must I would say to have unless there's a good reason for you not to have it very low and microscopes don't have it okay so that is the straight pretty much straight forward pretty much all decent microscopes these days and educational use have it some very low cost field microscopes might not the contends are another feature which you definitely should look out for also every decent microscope has this one okay except toy microscopes what does the condenser do where can it be found first of all the condenser is an optical element that can be found beneath the stage and there's a lever here to change the opening and closing of a diaphragm and this one is important for regulating depth of field and contrast and because many if your microscope has a condenser then there is also a so-called is Swing Out filter holder I don't know if you can see this now okay you can put filters in there and these filters allow you then to try out different imaging techniques like for example dark field and so on so this condenser not only improves image quality but also allows you to experiment around with different depth of field contrast it's for adjustment if you want to take pictures and all these things so that's definitely yes a feature to look out for again most educational microscopes and low-end microscopes these days already have this so the next one course and find focus knobs you might wonder why am i even mentioning this because I've seen some low-end microscopes that only have one focus knob and not both of them and for me that would be also one of those knockout criteria and microscope with only one focus knob unless it is a stereo microscope okay there they work differently but for the compound microscopes if there's only one focus knob I would disregard it okay so what do I mean over here this one is the course focus knob the one over here on the outside so turn and the one here is the fine focus knob which raises and lowers the stage in very small increments and this one in large increments yeah again and why am i mentioning this every decent compound microscope should have it some don't okay some very rare ones don't so look look out that you don't accidentally buy one that does not have both of them and light intensity regulator what is that well microscopes cannot only be switched on and off but you can also adjust the brightness of the lamp and in this case in this microscope you can turn your wheel over here the main switch is in the okay but then the brightness can be regulated over here this olympus microscope over there has a main switch over here and it in hope that you can turn to increase or decrease the brightness this is also I think very important to have I know that some very low-end microscopes or toy microscopes don't have this so this should also be present but yes I'm just mentioning this for the sake of completion because I think every decent microscope should have this when you're going microscope shopping you're actually going to find out very quickly the majority of microscopes actually have these features that are talked about right now so what is the difference between the microscopes and to give you a concrete example both of these microscopes over here they have all of these features that are just mentioned and this one over here cot was around 200 euros and this one over here was around 3,000 euros so more than 10 times the price so what's the difference now if you look through the microscope you'll be probably surprised the image quality is not that much different the reason is because the image quality is determined by the objective and the eyepiece and yeah that's essentially it and if exchange the objectives and eyepieces I get the same image quality so what is the difference right now well yes there is some microscopes are how shall I say manufactured a little bit better there is less wiggling going around in the parts the tolerances are smaller the the engineering is slightly better but this has no always it only very few cases actually an impact on the image quality why obviously the big one microscope over here has a so-called a trinocular head I mean you can now use both eyes to look through it you get the same image you don't see scary stereoscopically but it's simply more convenient because you don't have to close your eye all the time and then there's a photo tube attached over here so that you can mount the camera okay that's one difference it's a great deal bigger obviously it's heavier and more stable otherwise all of the features are pretty much the same I mean this one also an additional cooler illuminations of these this was my filter okay so basically there's an additional diaphragm down here but otherwise from the overall design there's not a huge difference so why what is it now well if it's like this that there is as always there is this so-called 2m 8020 rule so this means you can de for for significantly more money you're gaining a little bit more so if you want to have the last 20 percent of performance out of that you're paying significantly more okay so that is a little bit like this I mean it's like this that with this one over here you're not going to see ten times more than with a small one over here okay but sometimes there are a few features that simply are indispensable for some people for example for me I like to take a lot of pictures through the microscope okay so I want to have a really good photo cube I know it's difficult for you to see now because a little bit of yeah of this of the screen but for me this was a really important criterion and this costs a lot of money no it does not mean that you're not able to take pictures with this you can remove the eyepiece you can attach a micro camera here of course you can do that but I want to be able to take pictures in at the same time you look through the microscope okay so that's you see there are certain features that are simply do not want to Herschel si dispense off and therefore ah yeah for me that was worth the money but this does not automatically mean this is something that everyone needs in many wet form forms when people want to go microscope shopping and ask well they are always asking welcome is this brand good is this a good or a bad brand and that is I have to admit that's also a little bit of a difficult thing because it depends a lot not on the brand itself but actually on the specific microscope because a certain brand can they can manufacture relatively low-cost microscopes and they can also manufacture your or sell very high-end microscopes so it depends very much on the individual microscope my personal advice would be especially for beginners or if you're just starting to get into the hobby is get yourself a reasonably low cost microscope like I don't know a 200 euro or $200 microscope and get started with that and yeah and if the hobby hooks you and if you if you were if you like the hope you can always invest more money later on yeah that that is my general advice you have to learn a little bit actually hands-on and if you now invest I don't know all right away a three thousand euro microscope and you're not happy with it for whatever reasons because it's too big too bulky or or you don't inconvenient or you just don't like using it then what's the point so my advice is get yourself a cheap one and low-cost not the cheapest not point microscopes okay but a decent low-end microscope costs around 200 to 300 euros maybe and then get started with that and then later on you can always upgrade and then you know actually what you look out to look out for and you can also then ya make a more informed decision later on okay now if you go shop if you will not go shopping but if you post again questions on web forms then many people are gonna say well don't buy those cheap microscopes it's better to buy yourself a used quality brand-name microscope compared to a no-name microscope I get the point I get the point they were saying well for the same price you're getting a lot more value resale value I get the point but I think for for beginners this might be risky because you don't know what you're buying unless you have a a microscope shop that can ensure that the used microscope is working well and everything is in is fine I didn't have no problems definitely not but if essentially you're buying simply a I don't know we say always a I don't know yeah an unknown you receive what how do we say we buy a cat in a sack or something like that there's this idiom and you don't essentially know what you're buying then that might be also problematic okay so my advice would be is probably buy yourself from a microscope a dealer and a new microscope one that where you know it's gonna work and they might also take it back maybe after sometime if if you make a certain agreement okay if you're not happy with it and you can maybe operate or something you know so that would be my personal advice here otherwise there is a lot of Harshal is a personal preference in involved okay yeah and the best microscope is the one that you're actually going to be using most of the time okay so my advice is yeah make a decision also based on emotions I mean honestly it's a hobby right and it's more than simply getting a great image quality or getting the highest value for your money or whatever it's it's a personal thing you know and for me this microscope over here yeah I mean I could have got myself a microscope with the same image quality but I thought my my this microscope ah over there I'm going to finished my university studies and I wanted it to be expensive and I wanted it to be good and I wanted to spend money I'll be honest with you okay because I said okay that is the present I'm making myself and have saved for many years for a top microscope and that's what I bought and I still have it now and it's really as its new basically even though it's already 20 years old okay so there's a lot of emotional factor is very important as well okay and if you start asking around now concerning different brand names and and different I don't know then then it's getting very much a debate that I do not think is very fruitful time the mic just get yourself a microscope get started with your hobby after all it is a tool because it's there for nature observation we like to observe nature we want to explore their environment that's actually the main thing and so the focus actually should not be so much on the technical device itself I know it is I also like the technical aspect of microscopes okay I'll be honest with you it's also part of the hobby for me but yeah but let's not forget about observing and yeah don't forget in the past great discoveries have been made with microscopes that were far below even the lowest yeah at the cheapest microscopes that we have right okay so great discoveries have been made with very very low yeah low-end microscopes according to our modern standards of course one should never forget that okay well that was basically a little bit of philosophy right now at the end yeah I hope it was a little bit informative and wish you a nice day as always and all the best

Channel: Microbehunter

Views: 108,919

Rating: 4.9562464 out of 5

Keywords: buing microscope, microscope review, buying a microscope, what microscope to buy, how to buy a microscope, microscope buying guide, best microscope, best microscopes, used microscope, amateur microscopy, microbehunter.com, cheap microscope, types of microscope, microbehunter, microscope, stereo microscope, optical microscope, microscopic, amateur science, citizen microscopy, mounting medium, citizen science, buying help, buying advice, compound microscope, microscopy

Id: gKeOuec2KVY

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Human_Evolution]

From my research, I have found the AmScope M500 on Amazon for $160. It has most of the features that are recommended in this video. If anyone has any recommendations or advice, feel free to comment. I'm not clicking "order" until tomorrow just in case I'm missing something. I've only researched for a few hours.

 

I'm also wondering, what can I see with 2500x magnification that I can't see with a 1000x magnification? The microscope I may order only goes up to 1000x.