Newbie looking at B&L Stereozoom - Typical service/buyin

[g4lab]

To give the Devil his due, the Bausch and Lomb StereoZoom was indeed the first commercially successful zoom stereo back in days when we actually made stuff here. But even as a less experienced microscopist in the seventies I noticed that its image quality did not compare well with my first favorite scope the might AO Cycloptic which did have apo corrections but that is not that big a trick with a 3x objective I suppose.

Another thing to worry about in old AO scopes is that they had a method of setting prism collimation by embedding the prism in molten lead. You are very unlikely to find someone who can still do this repair. (I did once speak to someone in Michigan who informed me that they had just pitched the tooling they had to do this collimation in the field) But similarly tuning up mirrors in a StereoZoom is probably not worth the labor either (although "free" lasers that are small enough to fit onto the stage may make the job easy enough to be worth trying.


But the market for all of these is a buyers market. Yay!! It's always a good idea to give these things a thorough inspection. And don't plan on being able to get parts. (although some far east makers are making parts that will fit StereoZooms and some Wild models)

[phil m]

They were probably practicing for the 2000 olympics. That's a fairly good shotput from Buffalo to Michigan.