But first, this thing hadn't been used for years, so I had to clean it a bit. Maybe it was also just an excuse to understand how this thing works :)

It's an inverted design and has two optical paths, one for the binoculars and one for the camera.

#microscope

I started with some 50 year old permanent slides shown in the first post. The first one shows a fruit fly and the second one a brine shrimp (sea monkey), both under darkfield illumination.

My camera adapter hadn't arrived at this point, so I was just taking pictures through the binoculars. Though that will give you a better feel how it looks in person, like diving into an entirely different universe.

Once my camera adapter had arrived I went to collect some dirty water from a puddle. It's winter here, so it was frozen over, but even then, there was an absolute huge amount of life in there.
All following posts came from the same sample.

First off is a #Rotifer digging through some decomposing algae.

#microscopy #photography