My former stereo microscope (a GXM XTL3T101) has been my workhorse ever since I bought it. This is a mid-priced instrument and excellent value for money. One thing I have been finding however is that a high magnifications (40-45X) the quality of images dropped off compared with lower magnification. I have recently been able to trade-in my former microscope and upgrade to a GXM UltraZoom-3 stereo microscope:
So what do I think of it? Well to be honest my initial hope was to do a bigger upgrade than this, but without paying Leica/Nikon/Olympus/Zeiss silly money. That proved to be difficult as I couldn't find anything suitable in the mid-priced - Russian oligarch price gap. The GXM UltraZoom-4 is a great instrument and closer to what I was hoping for, but sadly the working distance is too short, so I settled for the UltraZoom-3.
After having a few days to use it, the GXM UltraZoom-3 is clearly an optical upgrade from the GXM XTL3T101, but perhaps not as mind-blowing as I was hoping for. Where it does score a big win is in the upper end of the magnification range (63x vs 45X on the XTL3T101). No only is the resolution better, but it is much brighter at the top end. This is particularly true of the trinocular light path to the camera, and I'm now able to use lower ISO settings and shorter exposures than before. The increased magnification also comes in handy - here's an illustration. A recent sample turned up the usual Tomocerid springtails. However, for the first time I was able to visualize the spines on the dens and identify the specimens as Tomocerus vulgaris without having to resort to using my compound microscope:
That is an advantage over the GXM XTL3T101 and makes me feel I made the right decision with the upgrade.
Microscopes with CMO (common main objective) do maintain image brightness as they are zoomed, while greenough-binocular models become very dark as magnification is increased. I use a Meiji RZ, which may be in the mid-price range that you intended, about 60% of the price of a similar Leica. However I do feel that Leica microscopes give a better perception of depth - Clive Washington.
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