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by dekhn 1013 days ago
Either works, but trust me, the trinocular part is far superior, ergonomically. You do need to know whether you want a metalurgical scope or a compound light transmission scope. The former is good at looking at opaque samples, the latter for transparent samples (biological stuff mostly).
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dylan604 1013 days ago
that is something i have considered, but not known what terms to use to look it up. i would love to be able to look at opaque things in a highly magnified way, so the lighting issue is something i had in the back of mind. i do like the biological stuff in hopes of possible timelapse to show growth.
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dekhn 1013 days ago
This is what I have for general opaque and transparent stereo viewing: https://www.amazon.com/AmScope-SM-4TZ-144A-Professional-Trin...

then I get this illuminator: https://www.amazon.com/AmScope-LED-6W-Powerful-Gooseneck-Ill... for top-down viewing, and it can be adjusted for bottom-up illumination.

Then you can buy samples- microscope slides, petri dishes and samples,f rom places like Carolina Biological.

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dylan604 1013 days ago
You're my hero!!! I hear Santa's sleigh bells now!
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dekhn 1013 days ago
Enjoy. Personally, I buy tardigrades and algae and a petri dish and look at that. Rotifers are cool too, and both can be collected from the natural environment. But, I also use the same scope to look at PCBs and other small things. After a while I got tired of moving the sample around so I motorized it using CNC technology (g-code, stepper motors, linear stages) and then trained an object detector so the scope can just follow the tardigrade around in an area much larger than its FOV.

if I have seen farther, or closer in this case, then I would like to thank all the giant shoulders upon which I have stood (seriously- look up ernst abbe, he's amazing, he created the 8-hour workday!)

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