Microscopy. Affordable microscope for pigments identification

More info at: http://chsopensource.org/2013/01/30/a... I have often been asked what kind of micro­scope is good for art exam­i­na­tion. Briefly, you need a trinoc­u­lar polar­iz­ing micro­scope with epil­lu­mi­na­tion (from the top) and trans­mit­ted illu­mi­na­tion (light from the bot­tom). I used to work in Brook­lyn with the glo­ri­ous polar­iz­ing micro­scope Nikon OPTIPHOT 66. Mov­ing back home in Italy I needed to buy an afford­able micro­scope. I had no time to look for a used good micro­scope. So, I even­tu­ally turned to eBay and bought a bud­get micro­scope. It was so cheap and I was really think­ing I were mak­ing a mis­take, wast­ing my money, just get­ting a toy. This blog is about my pos­i­tive sur­prise — I want share with you — for even­tu­ally get­ting a rea­son­able good micro­scope, good value for my money. Bot­tom line is that this kind of afford­able micro­scope don’t make up for a qual­ity one. I’m still on the look for another OPTIPHOT 66 but they can turn use­ful enough. This sys­tem I bought cost less than $1200 with all the needed acces­sories. A qual­ity micro­scope even used with all the fea­tures said above would go for over $6000. so, i thought it was worth a try. So, for $1200 I got a Polar­iz­ing Micro­scope with Epi and Trans­mit­ted illu­mi­na­tion (you need both, respec­tively for look­ing at cross-section and slide mounts). The Koehler illu­mi­na­tor for trans­mit­ted light feels really basic but it does its job The rotat­ing stage it’s not very easy to cen­ter — pretty rough move­ments — but after a while I man­aged to have it cen­tered. It has a set of objec­tives SEMI PLAN 4x, 10x, 40x. Eye pieces are both 10x and 15x so you get a total mag­ni­fi­ca­tion which is enough for the kind of tests you do on pig­ments. It is all metal con­struc­tion, though a bit rough over­all. For polar­iz­ing microscopy it has a rotat­ing ana­lyzer for both epi and trans­mit­ted light, and Gyp­sum & Mica Plates.It makes it easy to get pic­tures with its trinoc­u­lar Cam­era Port with 100% Light trans­fer and the 3 Mega Pixel USB Cam­era. Cam­era comes with its soft­ware but I pre­fer to use MICAM for all my imag­ing devices. For $1200 this micro­scope really comes with every­thing you need for art examination! Well, let’s see some pic­tures! First it’s nec­es­sary to cal­i­brate the sys­tem with a Stage Microm­e­ter Cal­i­bra­tion Slide.