Comparison of Olympus BX53 and cheap Chinese microscope

pwnell · Post by **pwnell** » Thu May 22, 2014 2:06 pm

I have posted a writeup of the image quality comparing a cheap Chinese microscope I used to own with my current BX53. Interesting to see the difference.

Protos · Post by **Protos** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 3:52 am

Good observation. However you are not comparing a chinese optics to a brand optics but transmitted vs DIC which makes a huge difference
I personally own a chinese microscope with infinite objectives and a Zeiss with infinite NEOFLUAR objectives
There are no real differences.

pwnell · Post by **pwnell** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 9:53 am

Fair enough but there are many comparisons I have posted that compares BF with BF. Look at the moth scale, and the link in the beginning of the article of the Bryopsis leaf.

Also keep in mind that I never said I am just comparing the optical quality of the objectives. I was comparing systems. Optics and illumination techniques not available on the cheap chinese microscope.

Protos · Post by **Protos** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 10:00 am

pwnell wrote:Fair enough but there are many comparisons I have posted that compares BF with BF. Look at the moth scale, and the link in the beginning of the article of the Bryopsis leaf.

Also keep in mind that I never said I am just comparing the optical quality of the objectives. I was comparing systems. Optics and illumination techniques not available on the cheap chinese microscope.

Yes indeed DIC is unfortunatly not available on Chinese microscopes but their infinite optics can be of good quality.
Anyway thanx for the comparison we need more of this (I plan to perform a diatomae pic comarison)

Litonotus · Post by **Litonotus** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 10:53 am

It would be great to see BF vs BF or obligue vs obligue showing excatly the same place of the specimen (: interesting and nice to see anyway (: thanks (:

Chinese microscopes do not offer DIC yet, but Motic is going to introduce plan apo optics ( a bit lower NAs compared to big4), so I think it is a matter of time when we see chinese DIC...

pwnell · Post by **pwnell** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:01 am

Here - in the beginning of my post I linked to this:

benjamind2014 · Post by **benjamind2014** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:28 pm

Just read that.

But it does not seem very informative since you are not only comparing microscopes but also comparing microscope cameras.

You realise that comparing cameras alone can bring a world of difference.

Why didn't you compare the two scopes using the same camera? That would have been far more informative.

To the point there are some good chinese scopes now. Look up 2000 and 5000 series. The 5000 series have phase contrast options too if I'm not mistaken.

I myself might settle for a Bresser trinocular and a Bresser stereo for my hobby needs.

pwnell · Post by **pwnell** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 12:11 am

I was comparing the complete system, including CCD. See my comments regarding the CCD used.

benjamind2014 · Post by **benjamind2014** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 3:47 am

Comparing a Motic CCD to a Canon 600D is a bit unfair don't you agree?

Take the Canon 600D and take the same photo through both microscopes and then post the pictures.

Cheap cameras tend to screw up pictures of even high quality optics. The reverse is true as well.

pwnell · Post by **pwnell** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 10:39 am

benjamind2014 wrote:Comparing a Motic CCD to a Canon 600D is a bit unfair don't you agree?

Take the Canon 600D and take the same photo through both microscopes and then post the pictures.

Cheap cameras tend to screw up pictures of even high quality optics. The reverse is true as well.

What you say is 100% correct.

But let me explain what I tried to do like this. Assume I wanted to see how well a Canon 350D and EF-S 18–55 kit lens compared to say a Canon 1DX + 135 f/2 lens. I can approach this many different ways.

1. Equalize everything I can and compare sensors only (like DXO)
2. Include the body and compare those (like DPReview)
3. Test only the lenses (like DPReview Lens and DXO Lens tests)
4. Test the kit as a whole, i.e. test the camera and lens as a system that produces an end result - a photo.

There are further complications. What software was used to process the files? Were they shot in RAW or Jpeg? What colour space? Etc. Point is, there are a huge lot of variables to consider when performing a comparison.

What I did was a non scientific comparison of my complete system I had 7 years ago, versus my kit now. As simple as that. It just happened to be a cheap ($450 or so) Chinese branded microscope with a Motic CCD. So yes, my results include the image quality imperfections introduced by the CCD, but that was my system back then.

How do you compare microscopes? Since most microscopes are merely modular components fitted together, I can perform the same comparison to the camera I did above. Are you comparing objectives? Polarizing optics? Eyepieces? Trinoc tube lens? Camera? Quality of the mechanical stage and frame for reduced vibrations and stability / flatness? Ease and smoothness of changing z-axis height of the stage? Quality of condenser? Of light source?

Any and all of those comparisons are valid in themselves. But it all depends on what you intended to test. So had I put a Canon 600D on the Chinese branded microscope, I would have eliminated one discrepancy between the two systems and indeed them compare only the mechanical systems (assuming I followed the same RAW workflow on both systems). But even then you cannot say much about just the objectives or just the condenser or any other component I mentioned above as you have not isolated them. Perhaps the objectives are nearly as good but the condenser and light source causes such a drop in image quality that it skews the results?

So in the end I did not try to do this. I simply wanted to see what I could produce back then with what I can now.

And that said, trust me, the objectives on that Chinese microscope falls so much short to the Olympus UPlanSApos that it can always and easily be identified in side by side images, which is which. Unlike a similar comparison between say a 350D and kit lens, with a 1DX and 135 f/2 under certain conditions (sunny day landscape photo).

benjamind2014 · Post by **benjamind2014** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 9:47 pm

7 years in China is a very long time.

Things have changed a lot in that time, even optics.

We're not talking Europe or the USA. Things have been changing very quickly in China since 2010.

I would be willing to bet £10 that the optics in the best Chinese scopes are 95% of the quality of the best European optics.

pwnell · Post by **pwnell** » Sun Nov 23, 2014 11:00 am

benjamind2014 wrote:7 years in China is a very long time.

Things have changed a lot in that time, even optics.

We're not talking Europe or the USA. Things have been changing very quickly in China since 2010.

I would be willing to bet £10 that the optics in the best Chinese scopes are 95% of the quality of the best European optics.

I do know that at the time I was shopping for my Olympus, Motic (a major Chinese brand) did not have a microscope with DIC optics.

Sorry we don’t carry any model capable of DIC, this is usually extremely expensive, can cost more than the microscope.

Try Leica, Zeiss or Nikon for that level of microscope.