Is the AmScope T490 compatible with Olympus objectives?

[CLSI]

I am a macro photographer looking to break into microscopy, as I describe in an earlier thread:

https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36283&highlight=amscope+t490b

Ichthyophthirius kindly suggested a few ways to get started with hands-on learning without breaking the bank, one of which was "buy a second-hand basic stand from one of the large manufacturers with modular microscope systems (Zeiss, Leitz, Olympus, Nikon) and upgrade the stand later with the techniques that you're interested in."

After thinking about this a while, I remembered a post by Rik of rjlittlefield I had found earlier about using an AmScope T490 stand as variant of a macro focusing rail:

https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24552&highlight=amscope+t490b

The key quote from this post is, "As far as I can tell, the bodies of the Amscope B390 and T490 series microscopes appear to be clones of an Olympus CH." He later modifies this to note that the stand does differ in some ways from the Olympus CH, but I'm left wondering, are the two bases close enough that I might be able to buy and start learning on the AmScope and eventually replace objectives and eyepieces with Olympus or other higher quality optics? I have no idea how interchangeable microscope parts might be, but the AmScope stand appears to be a decent stand.

[Alan Wood]

From looking at the AmScope page:

http://www.amscope.com/40x-1000x-lab-clinic-vet-trinocular-microscope.html

it looks as though the objectives are 45mm parfocal, and there is no mention of them being infinity-corrected, so you probably could replace them with Olympus objectives from the D Plan, S Plan or S Plan Apo series. There would be little or no benefit from using the EA or A series.

These Olympus objectives need matching compensating eyepieces, such as the WHK 10x/20 L or WH 10x/20 L.

For photomicrography, use the NFK 2.5x or 1.67x photo eyepieces.

Alan Wood

[Pau]

Yes, you can use on them any DIN objective (160 mm corrected, RMS thread and 45mm parfocal distance)* but with the exception of Nikon CF series good objectives of that vintage do need compensating eyepieces so for good results you will need to buy eyepieces of the same maker and age, there is some cross compatibility but not perfect, for example Leitz and Olympus compensation are close.

But if it is your idea...you can buy a Olympus CH2 for low prices although I would search a BX2.

The stand is important because there is not so wide compatibility of condensers and other accessories and the illumination path in those models doesn't alow true Kölher. I have quite some experience with chinese CH clones at my former work and despite the overall good design they were some quality control issues.

*This is how I begun: with a school CH chinese clone...later upgraded with Leitz objectives and later with Zeiss Standard stands...and now I have very complete systems
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Pau

[CLSI]

Thank you Alan and Pau. Lots to chew on here. Alan: Thank you also for compiling all that Olympus info on your website. Knowing that such a resource exists makes going the Olympus route (one way or another) that much more appealing!