Vintage microscopes and the M42 thread as a universal helper (IV)

We are going to continue our series about simple, M42 thread based microscope camera adaptations.

From a statistical point of the typical microscopist becomes older and older. And it might happen one day that his wife is selling his microscope ...
Thus used instruments and still perfectly usable microscopes appear at internet auctions, sometimes for bargain prices. With a bit of luck and a glance at the sellers' feedback internet microscope buying isn't that risky. And, as well as in normal photography, you do not necessarily need the most expensive microscope apo objectives in order to achieve good photographic results. Besides, imaging software can help a lot to pimp your images.

This line of thought might lead some of you to monocular microscopes and as a consequence to a truly minimalistic number of glass lenses in your system.
Let's have a look at one of those monoculae microcopes, namely an ENURO:

Fig. 1: A monocular "Enuro" microscope (built in the 1960s). With respect to tardigrade photography within petri dishes it has the big advantage - a horizontal object table. The monocular tube can be removed just by turning a milled thread. And a DIY photography adapter can be mounted instead as shown below.

Fig. 2: Camera adaptation for the Enuro microscope. The cheap aluminium black M42 thread spacer rings are not as luxurious os those original ones of brass but they will work as well. In this case the M42 rings are fitting perfectly in the stand and can be fixed by means of the milled wheel. You will be able to either use a direct light path (without dedicated eye-piece) or an even better adaptation just by mounting an additional thread adapter (with a 23 mm hole) inside the M42 tubes by means of some epoxy resin in order to use a photo eye-piece between microscope and camera.

Just have a look a photographic result achieved on this simple pathway:

Fig. 3: This image was made by means of a simple setup, under incident light by means of an IKEA "Jansjö" LED lamp. A Hertel&Reuss 10x/N.A. 0.25 microscope objective was used in combination with a Leitz Periplan eye-piece mounted within the M42 system.
Camera: Sony NEX-5N.

A further example, this time with a diatom specimen:

Abb. 4: Classical diatom circle specimen, photographed by means of the setup as described above. The diameter of the diatom circle is 0.75 mm. There is a little bit of softness in the image but we do like the result nevertheless.

Have a nice summer time!

© Text, images and video clips by  Martin Mach  (webmaster@baertierchen.de).
The Water Bear web base is a licensed and revised version of the German language monthly magazine  Bärtierchen-Journal . Style and grammar amendments by native speakers are warmly welcomed.

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