Natural Science Forum / Physics / Optics / June 2005

The Eclipse TS100 appears to use CFI60 objectives. I believe that they are
proprietary to Nikon. I don't recall the mounting thread specification for
CFI60 objectives, but it's different from the traditional RMS thread.

Here's some Nikon propaganda:

http://www.microscopyu.com/articles/optics/nikoncfioptics.html

HTH.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

A couple of issues:

1. Different mounting threads. New Nikon scopes use M25, as do Leica.
Olympus and Zeiss use RMS. You can use adapter rings to mount RMS objectives
on M25 turrets, but not the other way around. Bottom line: you can mount
Olympus objectives on a Nikon frame with an adapter. I know Leica sells
adapter rings because I once bought one from them (at about £40).

2. Parfocal distance. May or may not be important to you.

2. Make sure to use infinity corrected objectives if it is a frame intended
for that.

3. Different focal length of the tube lens for inifinity corrected optics.
Nikon: 200 mm. Olympus: 180 mm. Will cause slightly different magnification
from what is written on the objective.

4. All achromatic correction done in objective vs. some done in the tube
lens. If I remember correctly, Nikon and Olympus objectives have all
correction in the objective, while Leica and Zeiss don't. So Nikon and
Olympus should be interchangable without loss of quality.

I've used a 50x, NA=0.50 LWD Olympus objective on a Nikon frame once, and it
worked nicely, but I didn't have an Olympus frame to compare it with and I
didn't do any quantitative evaluation of the resolution.

Johannes

<crossposted to sci.tech.microscopy>

As others point out, the answer is generally 'you can't".  I've used
Nikon objectives in a Zeiss scope, but that's the exception rather than
the rule.  A much better plan would be to understand why you are getting
(presumably) poor performance from your Nikon lenses.  If you provide us
with some specifics (lenses, cameras, etc..) that would be helpful-
maybe your microscope is simply misaligned: have you checked to ensure
either Kohler or critical illumination is present?  What objects are you
imaging to come to the conclusion that the image quality "isn't smashing"?

Another question is why aren't you simply looking at getting
higher-performance Nikon objectives?