Microscopy

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Anything related to things that are too small to see them with the eye, and the tools used to observe them.

This space is quite general in scope - microscopes, microbiology, small component electronics, questions about buying optical components, etc.

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Sal@mander.xyz

Would like to switch out the objectives for my swift 380T, any reccomendations? (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago by magpie@mander.xyz to c/microscopy@mander.xyz

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I will be making sure they are the right objectives in every way before I purchase anything. I'd just like to know where I can start looking. I added a 60x a while back, it was really cheap but works surprisingly well considering I payed like 20$ CAD for it. Parfocality is just about the same as my stock objectives, just a slight turn of the fine focus. That said, I'd like to spend more and get a whole new set of higher quality objectives.

I'd love to hear feedback if someone here has switched out objectives on this particular model. I do not need to hear that my microscope sucks haha, I'm a hobbyist so its not a big concern of mine at this time.

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[–] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I first purchased some Plan objectives from China (40x, 60x), and they are alright. More recently I have been looking into objectives with high numerical apertures to increase the resolution of my images, and I think that the best source of good high-quality used objectives is Ebay. The Olympus apochromatic objectives with high NA are listed for a fraction of their original price, but they are still in the $200 - $500 range, so not very cheap.

[–] magpie@mander.xyz 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thanks! I will keep that in mind when hunting for some new ones.

[–] Sal@mander.xyz 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Alright! Some other tips:

Your current microscope is a 160 mm system, so make sure that the objectives are 160 mm and not infinity.
Make sure the objectives have an RMS thread
Once you move into higher-end objectives, you will have objectives that are specialized. For example, 'phase contrast' objectives have a dark ring inside of them. For the olympus brand their name often ends in 'PL'. These work with bright-field too. My 40/1.30 objective is actually a phase-contrast objective because I did not know this and ChatGPT told me it meant something different 😂 However, the objective does work well for me and I am now considering upgrading to a phase contrast-capable microscope (the BH2), so I made a good choice by accident.

[–] magpie@mander.xyz 2 points 21 hours ago

Awesome thanks so much for the specs!