objective and ocular on a bellows?

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Ecooper
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objective and ocular on a bellows?

Post by Ecooper »

I’ve been thinking (always dangerous)...is there any reason that you couldn’t mount a finite metallurgic microscope objective on a bellows, and fit an ocular at the other end between the bellows and the camera body to create (effectively) a microscope for reflected light microscope for photography at 100X to 400X?

EC

Pau
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Post by Pau »

Of course it may be doable, but, is worth it?. Why do not use a microscope stand?
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Joseph S. Wisniewski
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Post by Joseph S. Wisniewski »

Several reasons why we don't use a bellows that way...

First, pretty much no matter what you bolt it to, a bellows is not stable enough for 100x, let alone 400x. There's a reason scope stands are built like giant c-clamps, with the upright part is a couple of inches of cast aluminum, and the stage bolted to it firmly. A fraction of a micron of vibration will ruin a shot at 400x.

Next, the bellows focuser is not accurate enough for 400x. Heck, it's not really accurate enough for 40x. That's why microscopes typically have two stage planetary drive focusers.

And, if you just use a common occular, say 10x, with a 40x objective, hoping to get 400x, you'll have a ton of "empty magnification". You're not magnifying detail, you're just magnifying blur. That's why, when you have a camera on a trinocular scope, you have 10x or 15x occulars for your eyes, but a 2.5x or 1.66x "photo occular" for the camera. You might as well just put a 2x teleconverter between your bellows and camera. That will give you about the right amount of magnification to get to the limit of the objective's resolution. It will also increase the objective's field, typically around 20mm, to 40mm so the objective will nicely cover FF.

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