New Year's Revolutions - Phase Contrast

[Olympusman]

My New Years Revolution is to master my phase contrast trinocular. Quite honestly, this creature has scared me for quite some time.
I originally bought a phase binocular outfit from Amscope, thinking that would be fine. I could just mount a camera on one eyepiece for image capture, but it was a hassle.
Then I found an Amscope metallurgical trinocular head on the net for $150! At about this time, my dad was cleaning out his shop and dropped upon me a 12 VDC power supply, which is what the trinoc head requires. I built a frame to suspend an Olympus EP-1 camera with a 50mm Zuiko relay lens above the scope.
So, these are my early efforts. I will tell you, so far I am not crazy about the diffusion and lack of light in the 40X setup.

[ChrisR]

Not likely to get DIC, I have some phase bits, which I've never used.
I'm an ignoramus about microscopy, but I've always though of phase contrast as "well you can see what you need to but it ain't pretty", because the phase effect is so dominating.

There are far from that, I hope I can get somewhere close if and when I start pond-bothering

[Olympusman]

I'm about to give up on phase contrast. I can see its value for optical staining, but the overall effect just knocks down any detail due to haloing, plus, it is a major hassle to use. First, you have to reset the position of the condenser annuli for each objective. Second, the very nature of phase contrast eats up light before the image even gets to the camera. I think I'm going to take down all the phase contrast gear on this scope and just make it into a metallurgical scope.

One last image in phase contrast --

Diatoms