Microscopes

[Fossilmom2]

Hi everyone! I am an amateur fossil hunter new to microfossils. I have two big buckets of gravel from Aurora NC and I am going crazy looking through my little eye piece at every little bit. I would love to buy a microscope to be able to view microfossils, as well as my collection of teeth, bone, etc. I have no idea about models or makes of the many different microscopes available. I don't want to spend too much money, but I don't want a junky microscope that won't last ar work well either. I saw some that can hook up to your computer which would be really cool. Any suggestions?

[ashcraft]

Go to e-bay, they sell lots of used scopes in all price ranges. Make sure it is binocular (two eye pieces), and low power, around 20X is good for most viewing. An external light source is also helpful. The kind you want, we used to call "dissecting scopes" because they allowed for dissecting relatively thick specimens, and were illuminated by an over head lamp, not through the stage.

Brent Ashcraft

[jpc]

Another thing I really like (but I do a lot of microprep work) is a continuous zoom. This means you can zoom smoothly from the lowest power to the highest, as opposed to having only two choices, such as 10x and 30x. Yopu'll pay more, but it is much nicer. A Barlow lens is nice too. It it a lens you screw onto the BOTTOM of the optical part of the scope and it allows more distance between the same bottom and the specimen. But they also often reduce the magnification.