In article , George E. Cawthon says...

I'll agree with that. I've used many brands of compound microscopes
including the AO student types which are pretty crude. The low cost
scopes just don't compare with expensive ones. I've seen some nice
Zeiss machines but the best I've every seen were Leitz. Of course one
Leitz lens may cost as much as AO microscope. And a Leica (maker of
Leitz lenses) stereo zoom microscope I saw last week end was the cat's
pajamas, but they are spendy. Here's the thing, if you are going to
be looking in a microscope for hours each day buy the best you can
afford, maybe buy one you can't afford. Your stomach and head will
thank you if you have any tendency toward getting sick looking through
microscopes.

Agree! Towards the end, B&L was bought out by Leica. They
were producing the sterozoom pods in exact duplicate of
B&Ls designe, probably from the same factory.

Now Leica seems to have gotten away from those though.

I've used a sterozoom 4 for years, at one time they made
ultra-wide field 15x eyepieces, that give more field
of view than the regular 10x WF ones. With those things
the sterozoom really becomes quite useable. I used sunnex
lamps to illuminate, but at this time I've found that
a fiber-optic ring light is the way to go. But I still
keep two sunnex lamps right there, for fill-in light.

I found a Wild stero microscope in the scrap metal bin
(heh, I love working here) and got my boss to spring
for the eyepieces it was missing. Marginally nicer
than the sterozoom. The field of view on that seems to
have a *teeny* bit of barrel distortion though, compared
to the sterozoom. Just takes getting used to.

Jim

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