New scope day!
New scope! I started microscopy last end-of-summer / fall: MicrobeHunter & JTTMC entered my YouTube algo and I as hooked. I bought an SW380T, which I was very happy with; I was honestly shocked how good an image I saw through the eyepiece of a relatively inexpensive scope. I spent most of my time looking at microbes wet mounts. I did a lot of experimentation with darkfield, oblique, and rheinberg. I made a google sheet of everything I found, as taxonomically specific as I could be confident in (AI was a big help with this, though often wrong) and I used common names when I could not be too specific. I also made a google slide show with my best images for showing the appearance of the different microbes, organized by Kingdom; I think my next project will be to make a slideshow that is more focused on the most beautiful images. I ordered a cheap polarizing kit and took some great images of crystals.
Eventually, I began to feel the limits of the 380T. Because I was cropping out a large portion of my photos, spherical aberration did not bother me so much, but after a while it did get to me, even when I was just looking through the scope with my own eyes. If I was so impressed by how clear the center of the images was, I was very intrigued by how much more resolving power better optics would provide. DIC will likely remain out of my price range for a long time, but I wanted a new way of viewing the microcosmos; phase contrast. I also was unable to center my 380Ts condenser perfectly, which (I think) contributed to darkfield being very high glare at 20xobj, and neigh on impossible with the 40x.
After a few months of waiting and some personal events that made me feel like I had earned a treat, I pulled the trigger on the iScope, specifically the IS-1153-PLPHi. It arrived yesterday. I am very happy with my purchase; I love how easy it is to scan for things with Phase Contrast even if I would rather take a pic in Dark or Bright field. The DF setting on the condenser produces perfect DF up to the 40xobj, and with zero hassle. I can produce a Oblique effect by positioning the condenser part way between settings. The resolution in bright field is noticeably better than the 380T, but the field flatness makes it feel dramatically better. I love how solid everything feels. I love how I know I always have way more brightness then I need. I will be hanging onto the 380T for polarized microscopy, and also to do experiments with (like Diet Tom's Shinya-Vision instructions) that I do not dare do with my iScope. This was a very large amount of money for me to spend, but I have a feeling my $/uses/year will turn out to be very low haha. I'm very excited to dive deeper into the hobby.