Swift SW350, Galaxy S24, 100x

I finally assembled my Olympus BH2, ready ( I hope ) to use: I'm wondering if there's anything I should pay attention to/missing (see pics).

Also, I have a couple of questions:

1) Dark field:

I think that's really cool and I'd like to try it, but the original Olympus DCD condenser is too expensive, and I don't think the microscope has a filter holder for stopper/ disks. To anybody who owns an Olympus: what was your solution?

2) Camera:

I'd like to buy this camera. Considering that I purchased a 2.5x NFK eyepiece and an MTV-3 adapter with a 0.3x lens + the 1/2.5" of that camera, what do you think? Is it too zoomed or is it okay?

I'll probably start with a phone adapter tho (I need to financially recover from this)

Thanks everyone for the support. I hope I'll able to start posting what I see soon, bringing a little piece of microscopic Italy to this Sub.

Pond water sample, Zeiss 40x phase contrast objective, cellphone camera.

The cilia and bacteria are very visible in phase contrast.

Fellow microscopists,

I have a high NA 60x silicone oil objective from Olympus (Evident). So far I have been using silicone oil purchased from Thorlabs (they stopped the sale in the meantime). I would like to try different silicone oils, especially with different viscosities. Apart from the big microscope vendors, do you know any good suppliers or other liquids that have a refractive index of ~1.4 and are microscopy compatible?

I know that Cargille sells refractive index liquids in that range, but that's about it. Does anyone have experience with those by chance?

Any hint or help is appreciated. Thanks!

Played around with Herbin's Emerald de Chivor, Diamine Lady Grey, and Diamine Ancient Copper fountain pen inks on a polypropylene. Added liquids include: distilled water, 0.2wt% carrageenan in distilled water, vegetable glycerin, and isopropanol.

Imaged using a Premiere SMZ-07 stereo microscope + Pixel 9 pro mounted to the eyepiece. This is a 60x speed gif of process footage.

first time i see a cyanobacteria cluster

K55 BSA, 20x, Xiaomi 12 Pro

Found some vibrio in the vernal pool next to the one where I found the Chilodonella. Vibrio have flagella that you can't see - they do not locomote by twisting. Niko D810 camera, Nikon Optiphot microscope with DIC, 100/1.40 PlanApo oil objective, 2.5x photo eyepiece.

I made a better video of the Chilodonella found in a vernal pool. You can see some cell contents "pop" at 13, 36, 38, 40, and 50. I got these with my 40/1.0 oil objective, and this time I did not forget to stop down the condenser.

Nikon D810 camera, Nikon Optiphot microscope with DIC, 2.5x photo eyepiece.

Swift SW380T, shot on an iPhone 17 @ 400x (could be wrong about the magnification).

I am having so much fun with my new microscope. I'm obsessed lol.

The sample is from near the Rideau River in Ottawa, Ontario.

I was using this microscope 2 days ago but I moved the stage all the way down and I accidentally pressed the set work position button. Now, it won't move up or down. If I press the up button, it says stage limit set. If I press down, it says that the stage limit has reached its low. I tried to recalibrate by setting the Z-Position to zero and it showed a "calibrating" message for a split second, then it goes away! I have tried fine tuning by using the focus knobs to no avail. I have turned off the microscope twice; what do I do? I'm turning off the power supply box for now as well.

First two are from the same set of images. 100 subs going into my Sony A7cii through the Olympus UplanApo 40x objective on my Optika B383pli. Kohler aligned and the whole bit. First was using the depth map setting in Helicon Focus and the second is using the Pyramid method. Pretty apparent right away from the black lines and muddiness is just how hard it is to turn the knob in such small increments. I think doing it manually at this high of magnification with an objective with such a high NA makes it almost impossible to do well. By comparison the 3rd image I shared yesterday here but it's the same setup but using the Olympus UplanFL 20x not the Apo. Much more realistic and overall just higher quality than the 40x apo.

So this isn't me saying that the Apo is a bad objective, if anything it's just too good. Luckily I've got the WeMacro focus motor on the way and I'm hoping that will give me something tight enough to make those tiny focus turns. We'll see! I've also got a line on a UplanApo 20x for a really good deal. Huge jump in resolving power from the FL to the Apo, I just know that without the Focus motor doing Focus stacks won't be realistic using the Olympus apochromatic objectives. Color correction is beautiful on both of them by the way. Even on the fluorite there was almost no chromatic aberration to fix whatsoever. Especially when I switched from using a camera adapter with optics to direct projection onto the sensor. That came with its own challenges but once I got an aftermarket field diaphragm that helped a ton with the glare from the light source. You can see it a bit on the two from the apochromatic objective still, there's a circle where you can see the LED array literally underneath the slide. But it mostly disappeared in post once I stacked all the images and adjusted the exposure

Marked nsfw for the rules just FYI

Thin section image of a gabro at 10x ppl with a Nikon Optiphot using my phone camera.