Since 100% of my imaging is for saving photos I don't really need binocular viewing and would be happy with a monocular microscope to mount the camera on.
Looking for microscope upgrade
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Tropical Sojourner
- Posts: 16
- Joined: Sat Apr 12, 2014 12:59 pm
Looking for microscope upgrade
We currently are using a Leica Wild M420 dissecting microscope with trinocular mount and Canon 6D. Ideally I would like to achieve better optical quality with a zoom 3X-100X apochromatic. I know that is asking a lot but am wondering if one exists yet.
Since 100% of my imaging is for saving photos I don't really need binocular viewing and would be happy with a monocular microscope to mount the camera on.
Since 100% of my imaging is for saving photos I don't really need binocular viewing and would be happy with a monocular microscope to mount the camera on.
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Scarodactyl
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:26 am
What objective to do you have on it?
For a wider 16:1 zoom range you can get a Leica Z16 objective which fits directly on the head with a mechanical adapter (no optics), which also has interchangeable objectives for increased range. But its specced resolution isn't as high as the Z6/apozoom (though I'm not 100% sure how relevant that is when the apozoom tops out at what, 4x?)
Alternatively there are the Nikon AZ100 and the Olympus MVX10 macroscopes. The AZ100 has an 8:1 zoom ratio and the mvx10 has a 10:1, but both also have changeable objectives so you can expand that as needed. It may be hard to get the az100 to go down to .3x though, I think it bottoms out at .5x with a .5x objective.
Of course, if you're just after top quality photographs and don't care about the comfort of the eyepiece view then it's probably a bit counterproductive to stick with a macroscope form factor. And for toppest image quality a large continuous zoom also isn't the best option--it's a feature that has to make compromises on image quality for comfort and ease of use.
That being said, if you aren't on board with giving up the versatility of a zoom it might make sense to get a mitutoyo finescope and some mitutoyo m plan apo objectives. That has a built in 1-2x zoom in the head (though typically I hear you won't want to use it past ~1.5x for best image quality), and of course mitutoyo objectives are known for their tip top image quality and great coverage. Though this has the same issue as above with the AZ100 of having trouble with achieving lower mags.
There are other more obscure options from other makers. Qioptiq has their Optem Fusion system which goes up to aps-c coverage, and hirox/keyence have their own deals (though I think these are really optimized for small sensors, and their appeal is mostly in some software tricks to let them do cool things with footage, automatic stacking and generating 3d models--not likely to be ideal for your usecase).
For a wider 16:1 zoom range you can get a Leica Z16 objective which fits directly on the head with a mechanical adapter (no optics), which also has interchangeable objectives for increased range. But its specced resolution isn't as high as the Z6/apozoom (though I'm not 100% sure how relevant that is when the apozoom tops out at what, 4x?)
Alternatively there are the Nikon AZ100 and the Olympus MVX10 macroscopes. The AZ100 has an 8:1 zoom ratio and the mvx10 has a 10:1, but both also have changeable objectives so you can expand that as needed. It may be hard to get the az100 to go down to .3x though, I think it bottoms out at .5x with a .5x objective.
Of course, if you're just after top quality photographs and don't care about the comfort of the eyepiece view then it's probably a bit counterproductive to stick with a macroscope form factor. And for toppest image quality a large continuous zoom also isn't the best option--it's a feature that has to make compromises on image quality for comfort and ease of use.
That being said, if you aren't on board with giving up the versatility of a zoom it might make sense to get a mitutoyo finescope and some mitutoyo m plan apo objectives. That has a built in 1-2x zoom in the head (though typically I hear you won't want to use it past ~1.5x for best image quality), and of course mitutoyo objectives are known for their tip top image quality and great coverage. Though this has the same issue as above with the AZ100 of having trouble with achieving lower mags.
There are other more obscure options from other makers. Qioptiq has their Optem Fusion system which goes up to aps-c coverage, and hirox/keyence have their own deals (though I think these are really optimized for small sensors, and their appeal is mostly in some software tricks to let them do cool things with footage, automatic stacking and generating 3d models--not likely to be ideal for your usecase).