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Natural Science Forum / Physics / Optics / April 2006Microscope eyepieces have come a long way...
Now, you can buy outstanding eyepieces from Nikon, Zeiss, Olympus, etc. But it wasn't always that way. I wonder why it took companies making microscopes so long to come out with decent eyepieces? I'm not talking about for top dollar microscopes, but the student units and even some lab units up until a decade ago had very poor quality (design) eyepieces. The Huygens eyepiece is over 300 years old. The Kellner (achromatic eye lens) is at least 100 years old. Narrow fields, blurred edges, all sorts of aberrations either produced by the eyepiece or exaggerations of aberrations from inexpensive objective lenses. Compensating eyepieces existed, but honestly they could not match coupling a decent telescope eyepiece to a microscope. Many years ago, I would cobble decent telescope eyepieces (orthoscopics, Plossls, etc) onto microscopes and was amazed at the field quality and size increases I achieved. Now, you can buy really outstanding eyepieces, fully matched to the objectives but it certainly was odd that when you could buy consumer-grade telescopes with high quality eyepieces and yet microscope eyepiece quality was poor. Times change. > Now, you can buy outstanding eyepieces from Nikon, Zeiss, Olympus, etc. > But it wasn't always that way. [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > high quality eyepieces and yet microscope eyepiece quality was poor. > Times change. Rich, Nice ideas, too bad there are huge problems. There are things like lateral correcton that can be corrected either in the eyepiece or in the objective, one maker uses one type of correction and another maker uses another type. You need to use the eyepieces designed by the maker. As for primitive eyepieces, I haven't seen them. The big four primarily use kompensated type, have for decades. There are cheap eyepieces made but those are for second and third rate cheapies. Kevin Cunningham SMS The even kompensated eyepieces from some time ago have issues, principally narrow fields of view. But, nowadays even microscope eyepieces provide reasonable fields. But you are right, the better quality instruments have no optical issues today. My last scope was a Leitz SM-Lux with primarily plan-apos and it produced remarkable images. -Rich > The even kompensated eyepieces from some time ago have issues, > principally [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > produced remarkable images. > -Rich Our eye lens has huge chromatic errors, which we compensate for in our retina and brain. Similarly we compensate a lot when we view a microscopy image. When taking photos with a microscope, the errors of a system cannot be hidden, perhaps the increased use of photomicrography forced some of the improvement.  SignatureTrond Very true. It's often pretty shocking when you see an image versus what you saw in the scope. But you get used to it. And what exactly is shocking? The only thing I realize is that the eye samples the image in z-direction and the camera does not. The eye also closes its iris dynamically and hence gives the observer the impression that he actually sees a more contrasty image than a cheap digital camera can record. But compared to the expensive, Peltier-cooled image sensors, this is a completely different story. BTW, most of us are not using "standard" eyepieces for photomicrography but dedicated relay lenses that cost $600 or more. I doubt that any ocular for a telescope is better than these highly corrected relay lenses. This is especially true for a setup where the intermediate image is directly projected onto the image sensor as it is recommended for Nikon's research frames. Gregor > Very true. It's often pretty shocking when you see an image versus > what you > saw in the scope. But you get used to it. Ingles, por favor! I am looking at two resolutions, 0.3 megapixels and 1.3 megapixels. Is 0.3 megapixels enough or do I need 1.3 megapixels? SignatureYours, Dora Smith Austin, TX tiggernut24@yahoo.com > Now, you can buy outstanding eyepieces from Nikon, Zeiss, Olympus, etc. > But it wasn't always that way. [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > high quality eyepieces and yet microscope eyepiece quality was poor. > Times change. |
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