Confused newbie looking for help on new microscope

[pwnell]

Hey,

I have been visiting these forums on and off drooling over some of the pictures made by some of the members on this site for the past year. My background is in photography - especially macro photography up to 5x life size using the MP-E 65 and Canon 1Ds3.

However I'd like to step into the world of photomicrography again. I say again since I used to own a Motic setup - a small biological binocular scope with a 2.1MP CCD that got mounted on one of the binocular eye pieces. I cannot recall what model number it was though, just that I paid about $500 for the scope and about $800 for the CCD.

The photos I could take with it was not what I'd call amazing. Diffraction, chromatic aberration, non flatness of the focal plane and general non sharpness was my main concerns. Also that I believe I could only use it for illumination from beneath the slide (for prepared, translucent specimens). Sorry - my technical terminology on this subject is rather poor - I have read up considerably but feel a little lost.

Hence the reason for my posting. So I do own a nice 21MP Canon, as well as have access to a Nikon D80 and D90 DSLR. With this in mind, and that I want to build this setup 95% for photographical reasons, please help me decide which scope is the best option.

I do not have $25000 for a microscope. I do not intend to photograph neutrinos or leptons or the higgs boson - if that was even possible using optical technologies. Nor do I want to be able to use all the fancy techniques for lighting. What I do want is the best balance between superb optics with great resolution and sharpness, a diverse set of lightning capabilities (darkfield/fluorescence/reflective etc), great coupling to one of my DSLR's and the capability to photograph both microscopic entities such as cells, butterfly scales etc and larger things like the eye of an ant etc - up to what I can get with my 5:1 MP-E lens...

I looked at scopes and my mind started melting. So many options, so many technical aspects... I peeked at the Nikon ECLIPSE E200 which seemed pretty good - but I have no idea of cost nor performance/applicability to what I want.

Can someone provide me with some guidance as to what I can expect to get for say under $3000 excluding CCD (as I want to use my DSLR), keeping upgrades open as an option should I decide to invest more lateron?

Thanks for a great site.

[Gary W Brown]

I have several microscopes that may be of interest. One is the Olympus BH-2 another is a Nikon Optiphot and a third is a Zeiss Standard. These are fully serviced and guaranteed. You can contact me at:
gw2brown@earthllink.net

Gary