[madbadgalaxyman (Robert)]

As I have just been shopping for a stereo microscope for my niece, and I was looking at getting a reasonably-good quality instrument at 'the low end of the mid-range'($500-$700 US dollars) for a young science enthusiast, I now have a few more comments about bargain-priced stereo microscopes.

- the first few pages of a "google search" for microscopes always come up with the same two or three 'big' dealers......Don't trust google to find a good cross-section of commercial dealers!......Try much later pages in the google searches, or use other search engines, to find more microscope dealers.

- Some of eyepiece designs used in microscopes are very basic, compared to the ones we are used to in amateur astronomy. This is one way that costs are reduced in these complex multi-element optical instruments.

- The cheapest microscopes in the ranges of some reputable manufacturers, can seem suspiciously cheap. One wonders where they are getting these scopes from.

- Some of the cheaper stereo microscopes in the ranges of reputable manufacturers show evidence of compromises in optical design, e.g. in the Motic model SMZ-140 (about $600-$700 US), the eyepiece design looks rather old-fashioned and perhaps relatively narrow in field. There can be little doubt that the more expensive Motic scopes are better than the Motic SMZ-140, as their optical designs are superior.

- the type of stand/stage that you buy together with the optical assembly, has a big influence on the final price of an instrument; e.g. stands without built-in illumination are cheap, stands with built-in halogen illumination are more expensive, and stands with LED illumination are the most expensive. (Halogens are OK for illuminating specimens, but they are very hot, while LEDs do not have the heat problem). The stand in my Meiji stereomicroscope contains a variable LED to shine on the specimen (reflected light) and another variable LED behind the specimen that can backlight it.....this is ideal, though it does add substantial cost compared to a plain stand with no built-in illumination.