Here's a very helpful email that we received from one of our customers with some suggestions on purchasing a microscope. Thank you Ingrid.
Many of your customers are considering the purchase of a microscope. I thought I would offer some suggestions that cover a fairly wide range because I know that your customers have different budgets.
First, let me explain in a simple way how darkfield imaging is created. In a normal light or brightfield microscope, the light comes straight up through a condenser and the objects on the slide are generally seen as dark against a more or less clear field, one that is so bright that some objects are invisible because the light washed them out.
In darkfield, the light path is obstructed so that the light appears to hit from the edges. This causes a sort of silhouetting of the objects against a darkfield, usually almost black. This type of microscopy requires a special condenser and better imaging is possible with oil immersion objectives with irises than with ordinary objectives. Because the exact path of light is critical to what is illuminated, the condenser has to be perfectly centered in order to get good results. If severely off center, nothing at all can be seen.
There are people providing DF scopes that can only facilitate adequate DF at 40x magnification. At this level, no oil is required so less skill is needed than with oil objectives, but I take exception to the notion that 40x is sufficient to "see everything of importance." You do, in fact, see much more at higher magnifications.
The oil immersion objectives have irises or diaphragms that allow for very tiny adjustments to compensate for differences in thickness of cover slips. Variations within the same box of cover slips can be significant so this ring is very helpful, but one can sometimes see quite a bit with a much cheaper objective that has a stop instead of an iris ring. For hobbyists, this makes entry level work affordable, but for more serious work, the oil and iris are both essential.

The four big microscope companies are Zeiss, Leica, Nikon, and Olympus, but fierce competition is arising out of China and to a lesser extent Russia and India. Mergers and acquisitions combined with outsourcing of production has resulted in a situation in which many components of microscopes are made in third world countries, including a lot of low-end objectives for the big four. In other words, it is possible that an inexpensive Zeiss scope is not really made in Germany and thus cannot be expected to have the same production standards as a higher-end Zeiss scope.
This said, brightfield and phase contrast scopes vastly outsell darkfield scopes so very few manufacturers have a model that is ready for darkfield straight out of the box. The exception might be Hund, a German company that produces a decent DF scope for around $4000. The Lomo that is availabale is modified for DF by the manufacturer. In short, it is not built for DF but rather converted in the U.S. It is a professional scope with surprisingly good optics and even more bang for the buck than some Chinese scopes.
For instance, one can get a Chinese scope with camera and monitor for about the same price as the Lomo but the allocation of funds in the budget is totally different. I think the Chinese have catered to a captive market where someone thinks of a microscope purchase in somewhat the same way as a computer and they want all the pieces in one box, but each is a little scaled down so as to capture the entry-level market. The Lomo is klutsy and anything but modern looking, but it is hugely functional, especially with the addition of the fiber optic illumination, an optional extra. Once one has the right condenser and objectives and enough light, this scope can really do the job, albeit a little awkwardly but professionally. It still prices out under the Hund but a little above the cheapest of the Chinese scopes but less than some of the better quality Chinese scopes. This is the market the Russians have staked out and want to hold. Lomo beats all the big four on pricing and basically has all the features required plus a built-in magnifier, something I have not seen on other scopes. What this means is that whereas most scopes ship with 10x eye pieces and four objectives, with 100x being the highest magnification, Lomo ships with two sets of eye pieces, 10x and 15x, plus a magnfier so that the maximum magnification is 3750x rather than 1000x. This makes for a significant difference in what one can see. Perhaps more important even is the fact that the oil immersion objectives are really good, not perhaps of the same quality as Zeiss but still very, very good, meaning clinical work is possible on a budget of $3000 as opposed to double or triple that with a name brand. In short, you get the optics without the design aesthetics, but the scope is rugged and has a lifetime warranty on everything.

I received this comment from one of our readers,recently. "I see you have LOMO microscopes and I would like to know what you think of them. You sound very experienced and I cant find reviews on them anywhere! Thanks! (And BTW, you sound like a great Lady!" First of all, thank-you for the nice comments and for reading my blogs. I own several LOMO microscopes such as the LOMO SF-100 stereo microscope and the LOMO Multiscope BMH4-BF microscope. You can also purchase these and other LOMO microscopes from our OpticsPlanet.net website at LOMO microscopes. I own them specifically because I want 1)top notch, all metal, heavy-duty construction and 2)great optics for the dollar. Sure, I would love to own a Nikon or Olympus many thousands of dollars, but for a hobbyist like me, that's a little out of my price range. However,I do want a quality microscope and it's nice to get one made in Russia the old fashioned way. A lot of our professional and industrial customers feel the same way and they buy a lot of LOMOs from us. Really can't make a mistake buying a LOMO. Joanie

It's getting warmer and warmer every day, but somehow yesterday I was dreaming about winter and snow. Maybe because I'm from a country with a very cold winter, and therefore I love winter, making snowman, when my nose gets red from the frost, the beauty of sparkling on the sun snow, and much - much more. So, today I wanted to tell you about snowflakes, in case you have never seen one magnified under a microscope, or even in real life. Snowflakes are made up of from 2 to 200 separate snow crystals. Snow crystals are crystals that have formed around bits of dirt that have been carried up into the atmosphere by the wind. So snow crystals are really soil particles that have been dressed up in ice. Can you imagine that? Scientists consider that there are four different shapes of snow crystals. The simplest shape is a long needle shaped like a spike. The other shapes all have six sides. One of them is a long, hollow column that is shaped like a six-sided prism. There are also thin, flat six-sided plates. And lastly there are intricate, six-pointed stars. The shape that a snow crystal will take is dependent upon the temperature at which it was formed. The snowflake magnification under a microscope starts at 93 times normal size and takes you up to 36000 times normal size. So, in order for you to see the texture and the makeup of a snowflake, you'll need a good microscope with excellent magnification.

If you're in need of a microscope, and are now searching all optic stores and websites, please be sure that you know enough in order to make a wise decision. Remember that sturdiness is a very important quality when considering buying a microscope. The microscope you purchase should be solidly constructed and composed of a sturdy metal alloy. Don't even look at plastic microscopes, because they do not last, so it would be best to avoid them. There are two the most popular types of microscopes: stereo microscope and compound microscope. A stereo microscope uses two different paths of light. Stereo microscopes have high depth perception but at the same time low resolution and magnification. These microscopes are great for dissecting as well as for viewing fossils and insect specimens. As for compound microscopes, they use a single light path. They can either have a single eyepiece, so called monocular microscopes, or a dual eyepiece, the so called binocular microscopes. Compared to stereo microscope, compound microscopes on the contrary have low depth perception but high resolution and magnification. They are used for viewing very small specimens such as cells, pond life samples and other microscopic life forms. So, good luck in your choice!