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Intro to Compound Microscopes

Join a fungi photography foray

 Fungi identification  via a Compound  Microscope

Fungi features can look very beautiful under a compound microscope with a 1000x oil immersion  lens. The latest means of photographing microscopic images and viewing them on your computer or smart device offers fungi enjoyment during the winter months.

Different species of fungi can look very similar and another way of confirming a find's identity  is to examine its features under a microscope.

The easiest and first th
ing to look at are the spores, which differ in size, shape and  ornamentation.   You can also look at Asci, clamp connections, basidia and cystidia.
To see microscopic fungi  parts like spores and ascii clearly you will need a  good quality 1000x magnification  compound microscope  with an  oil immersion lens.
A Compound microscope combines the magnification power of a lense that rotates above your slide with that of the ocular lens you look through.  
A compound microscope usually has four objective lenses with 4x, 10x,20-40x and 100x magification  and a 10x magnification ocular lens making a total magnification of 1000 times.

Take a moment to find the ocular  (i) and objective  (h) lenses on the diagram.
High Microscope Magnification   Needs good Resolution

Quite a few compound microscopes are advertised as having 2000 or more times magnification.  However, don't be lured by  promises of magnification much greater than  1000 times.  
It can be easier to measure spores at greater magnification but the images will be  blurred and lack detail because increased magnification does not increase resolution.  This will be the problem with the new 1000x  iphone microscope attachment. 

The principle is the same as enlarging a photo without increasing the number of megapixels within it.  The photo will pixelate rather than show more detail.
Resolution Capacity
 A microscope's resolution capacity results from the quality of the  available light,  of the condensor  and objective  lenses  (c,d,h,l) through which the light passes, and the mechanisms for focusing  (j,e) and adjusting the strength, diameter   (b ,d) and angle (d) of that light.
Modern compound microscopes supply  light through a lamp  mounted underneath the glass slide on which your fungi specimen is  mounted, at point a on the diagram.  Click here for more on the types of lighting you can choose
Picture

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