One of Microscope World's goals is to tell the consumer the facts as we see them. We want you to get the best product for your money and have as much information as possible to make an educated choice (and frankly, we doubt our competitors do these tests at their facilities). So, taking in all the data and factoring price into the equation, in our collective opinions, we have made the following conclusions:
- The standard achromats are good lenses but, factoring in price, we would recommend the ASC lenses over all others.
- If the price difference between the ASC and Plan lenses isn't that important to you and a flat field is, then choose the Plan lenses. The consensus was that the 100x Plan lenses had less distortion at the outer edges and a bit more uniformity of brightness. If you will be doing a lot of imaging or spending many hours looking into your microscope, the Plan would be a wise choice.
- The 150 series achromat objectives are of good quality however, having a bright halogen illuminator (such as in the 160 series) improves the image at 1000x.
Limitations of this study. No, it wasn't a double blind study and our sample size was extremely small. We only tested the 100x objectives on a model 162 binocular scope, but we assume that this data will carry through to all the 160 series microscopes as well (160, 161, 162, 163). We also think that the results will be the same when testing the 4x, 10x and 40x objectives too.
|