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I bought a stereo microscope a few days ago, and have now spent several hours putting it through its paces. Its a somewhat different kettle of fish compared to my trusty old compound microscope. The stereo microscope has 4x zoom, and powers from 10 to 40x. One can switch between incident and transmitted light, and the intensity is variable. I have a photo adapter on order, which suposedly threads into the trinocular so that one can connect a dSLR to the setup.

The scope seems suited for viewing objects no smaller than half a mm or so, or to bring out suface detail in large objects like coins and rocks. Sand grains look amazing, as do small flowers and insects. There is hardly any sample preparation required. Just plunk the object down, fire up the illumination and off you go. Aquatic critters, I expect, can be placed in a wet petri dish and examined directly.

I was blown away by the life like 3-D reach-out-and-touch view. Anyone else using a stereo microscope at the moment? I'm starting to think that these are the ideal "starter" scopes.

Hi Mintaka,

Stereo microscopes can be excellent, I bought mine to use when dissecting small invertebrates. You are right aquatic specimens are best viewed in a small petri dish or the like, also these usually show up best with a black background or a mirror providing it is far enough below the focal plane.

May I ask what is the photo adapter? Dose it have optical elements to correct for a digital camera's fixed lens or what?

Enjoy your new microscope, and think on this it is theoretically possible to take stereo photographs through the binocular head.

Regards Peter.

Peter, yes, my understanding is that the adapter tube contains a lens that gives an additional 2x power. But you have to take the lens off your dSLR camera and thread in a T-ring specific for your camera, to which the adapter connects. I don't think it will work for compact cameras with fixed lenses. I use my compact for afocal (through the eyepiece) work.

Interesting notion this! When you alternately close one eye and then the other while looking through this microscope you can definately notice that each eye receives a slightly different picture of the specimen. If each immage can be reliably recorded with a compact camera, and somehow presented overlayed in different colours .... hmm, I wonder ....