I bought my present compound microscope (an Apex Practitioner) for £100 nearly 10 years ago. It's been amazingly good for the price, but hoping to do better, I wanted to upgrade. Given the quality of the results I can produce, this is a problem as I'm into the uncomfortable valley between what I can currently do and a five figure sum for a top brand instrument - undoubtedly better but also undoubtedly overpriced - a £10,000 microscope cannot, according to the laws of physics, be 100 times better than a £100 instrument. Eventually, after much dithering, I zeroed in on candidates, and asked for a quote from a UK company I have bought several microscopes from in the past. I was shocked when they came back with a quote for £2,700 (including £150 for delivery!), so I shopped around. The microscope I was interested in comes out of a big Chinese factory and crops up under various names all over the place. By shopping around I managed to find very similar kit (may not be absolutely identical) for £1,200.
To buy or not to buy? I've bought a lot of Chinese optics over the last 10 years. They cannot be beaten on price, but there is a problem. The Chinese megafactories churn out the optics but the quality control is not as good as the expensive named manufacturers. There are good copies (absolute bargains), and not so good copies. The only way to find out is to buy one and try it. And then send it back if you're not happy - a hassle, but a major saving. So what did I get?
- AmScope T720Q-EUL trinocular compound microscope. This has Kohler illumination (too complicated to go into here, Google it if you want to know more), widefield 10x eyepieces and a quintuple nosepiece with 4x, 10x, 20x, 40x infinity plan objectives, and a 100x oil objective which I don't plan to use and may replace with something else.
- I also bought a dry darkfield condenser (since I don't plan to use the 100x objective) to allow me to use darkfield illumination.
- Camera adaptor: 23mm trinocular port to T2 adapter with a 2x reduction lens, plus a T2 to Sony E mount adapter. This allows me to mount my Sony a6500 body on the trinocular port. Fitting cameras to microscopes is a dark art and something I've had problems with in the past. Choosing a 2x reduction lens was an educated guess based on reading what was needed for an APS-C sensor. This made me nervous - but I got it right! Although the camera is not parfocal with the eyepieces this isn't a problem in practice. The field of view on the camera sensor is also slightly wider than that through the eyepieces. Microscope firms are now obsessed with USB cameras, but even the best ones costing over £1,000 pounds aren't a match for a camera such as the Sony a6500 - the resolution isn't the problem, exceeding that of the microscope optics, but image quality and dynamic range is.
Cons:
- There's a lot of plastic, parts that would be better as metal. In general the construction feels a bit flimsy, although the stage controls, focus, etc. are fine. In practice, it works, and it is lighter than a fully metal instrument.
- Lots of microscope snobs will tell you "This is not true Kohler illumination". I don't know about that, I can only judge by the results I am able to achieve.
- I don't plan to use the 100x oil objective but it comes with the microscope. I may replace it with something else.
Pros:
- It (nearly*) all fits together and it works! Phew!
- It's more convenient to use a trinocular microscope than clamping the camera onto the monocular eyepiece as I've been doing for the past 10 years!
- Image Quality: As expected it's not 10 times better than my old microscope but it is definitely better. Overall, together with the improved ergonomics, I feel I made the right purchase. As with cameras (and ovens!), the instrument itself is only half the story - the person using it is as important.
*And now the bad-ish news
The darkfield condenser I bought does not fit the microscope. My fault, but AmScope don't make a darkfield condenser which fits this microscope. I have been able to find one elsewhere, but given the cost (a third of the price of the microscope) and how useful it is likely to be to me, I am currently exploring other solutions (more of that later).
In summary
- Lots more experimentation to come, photos to date on BlueSky.
- Credit to AmScope. For 99% of users, the microscope snobs are wrong about AmScope.
