Excellent microscope on Ebay

[Chris Yeates]

I'm sure that I'll hear the snorts of derision up here in Yorkshire, but this is a superb deal http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Olympus-BH-2- ... Swc1FXcBPv for the eqivalent new today you'd be looking at well over £30k . . .

this is the seller I got my 'scope from - really helpful guy, I pestered him a lot as I was setting it up.

Anyway - who needs two kidneys?
Chris

[Flaxton]

If only Chris.
Mal

[Chris Johnson]

Now a snip at £4,999.99

Chris

[Waxcap]

But wait.... it's now £3,999 (plus VAT) on Nick's main website I'm waiting until it gets to £2999.

Dave

Edit: it's seems to have sold, not really surprised - it is very rare to see an Olympus BH2 BHS with DIC on the market.

[Chris Yeates]

another one's popped up http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Olympus-BH-2- ... SwaB5XpRO~ . . . .

[Flaxton]

Same one?

[Leif]

Five grand, that's a large fraction of the cost of a new car. I could not really justify one, the opportunity cost is too high. It is a large fraction of the cost of a new kitchen, or a new bathroom, it would buy a very good camera kit (my new super duper camera cost a fraction of five grand), or you could stash it in a unit trust, and see it grow rapidly in 5 years or more.

[Waxcap]

Same one?

This does seem to be different one as it has a very mixed bunch of objectives. The Nomarski prisms in this condenser were designed to work with the Olympus SPlan objectives and only the 20X is an SPlan.

You can get the same results as a £5000 microscope by using a cheap microscope and applying the emboss filter in Photoshop.

Dave

Before

After

[Chris Yeates]

. . . . The Nomarski prisms in this condenser were designed to work with the Olympus SPlan objectives and only the 20X is an SPlan. . . . .
Dave

Those Leitz objectives would work fine for DIC (at the correct condenser position for the appropriate objective power); they look to be among the ones with correction collars as well, probably better quality than the original Olympus ones . . .
Chris

(I have no axe to grind; agree it's a lot of money, but comparisons with cars are a bit misleading, as they wear out and depreciate considerably in value, so the new-to-old equation is not the same - the cost of a new DIC 'scope, now that is really scary)

[Waxcap]

Those Leitz objectives would work fine for DIC (at the correct condenser position for the appropriate objective power); they look to be among the ones with correction collars as well, probably better quality than the original Olympus ones . . .
Chris

Hi Chris.

Olympus makes different prisms for their own different ranges of lenses. As I said this condenser has prisms designed to work with their SPlan range. They did another NIC condenser for the BH2 (BHS and BHT) where the prisms were removable and they produced a range of individual prisms to work with their own different objectives. There are prisms matched to their DPlan Apo range, for instance.

In the Olympus document here http://www.alanwood.net/downloads/olymp ... ctions.pdf (kindly reproduced by Alan Wood) if you scroll down to VII (4) they have a table of Light Path Selection and a note underneath that says "Any objective other than those mentioned above cannot be used for interference contrast or phase contrast observation".

That doesn't mean that what you said above isn't true - I know that Charles Krebs says he prefers the DIC image when using prisms designed for the Olympus DPlan APO objectives with SPlan APO objectives - but I personally would opt for the safety of the Olympus recommendation (or that of someone like Charles, who has tested many combinations) rather than risk an expensive mistake.

Not specific to differential contrast but another issue with these LB finite objective microscopes is that a lot of the manufacturers had only part optical correction in the objective and the rest was done by the eyepiece, so the objective needs to be the same make as the eyepiece to be sure of the best image quality. Some manufacturers may have used the same corrections so they may match but you have to do your research.

Dave

[Chris Yeates]

Those Leitz objectives would work fine for DIC (at the correct condenser position for the appropriate objective power); they look to be among the ones with correction collars as well, probably better quality than the original Olympus ones . . .
Chris

Hi Chris.

Olympus makes different prisms for their own different ranges of lenses. As I said this condenser has prisms designed to work with their SPlan range. They did another NIC condenser for the BH2 (BHS and BHT) where the prisms were removable and they produced a range of individual prisms to work with their own different objectives. There are prisms matched to their DPlan Apo range, for instance.

In the Olympus document here http://www.alanwood.net/downloads/olymp ... ctions.pdf (kindly reproduced by Alan Wood) if you scroll down to VII (4) they have a table of Light Path Selection and a note underneath that says "Any objective other than those mentioned above cannot be used for interference contrast or phase contrast observation".

That doesn't mean that what you said above isn't true - I know that Charles Krebs says he prefers the DIC image when using prisms designed for the Olympus DPlan APO objectives with SPlan APO objectives - but I personally would opt for the safety of the Olympus recommendation (or that of someone like Charles, who has tested many combinations) rather than risk an expensive mistake.

Not specific to differential contrast but another issue with these LB finite objective microscopes is that a lot of the manufacturers had only part optical correction in the objective and the rest was done by the eyepiece, so the objective needs to be the same make as the eyepiece to be sure of the best image quality. Some manufacturers may have used the same corrections so they may match but you have to do your research.

Dave

Hi Dave
you clearly know more about these matters than I do, and I'll take your word for it (sorry if that reads as sarcastic - it honestly isn't!). I do know that the seller was extremely helpful to me both before and after I had bought mine (and while I was putting the thing together - opening bubble wrapped packages labelled "Fragile", "Very Fragile" and "Extemely Fragile"!), so I suspect he isn't selling a pup . . . though mine did have all-Nikon lenses with DIC in their name on the appropriate ones.

cheers
Chris

[Waxcap]

Hi Chris,

I've bought from Nick's Science Supplies before and, as you have already said, he's a very trustworthy, knowledgeable and helpful guy. I didn't mean to infer that he was selling something that wouldn't work. I was pointing out that it was a different scope from the other one (which had a full set of SPlan objectives) and that the mixed objectives would be an issue for me - from what I have learnt.
It wouldn't put me off the microscope (at the right price) as SPlan objectives are relatively cheap and easy to come by on Ebay but the Differential Interference Contrast kit for the Olympus is very hard to get and very expensive.

I only know something about it as I have built up a small collection of Olympus scopes and having managed to get the bits for Brightfield, Darkfield and Phase Contrast, I am now trying to source the last part to complete my DIC setup.

Dave