Sunday, January 21, 2007

My Wish List from Optics Planet

This is a pay per post ad. But I've blogged before about wanting a digital microscope to share pictures of the unseen world of tiny creatures and mineral components of rocks before, so I would have done it anyway.

Optics Planet is an on-line retailer of all kinds of optics gear. Telescopes, night-vision goggles, binoculars, and...microscopes!

My kids being the curious sorts, are fascinated by what they see through our old microscope. We've found all kinds of uses for it. We've looked at water from the gutter (full of wigglies!), rocks (all those specks are different minerals!), salt crystals (ooh! Pretty!) and dirt. Yes, dirt. It turns out dirt under a microscope looks the same as rocks, only the mineral components are teeny.

What we want is a digital micrscope so we can take photos to our computer and share them on this blog. And bore the living daylights out of all of you. I digress.

Here's what Optics Planet has to offer. There's a page for microscopes. There's a page for digital microscopes. When I went there, I saw six different ones offered. Let's see which one I like best so all of you can get together and buy it for me as a present...how about this one? The TMH4-BF-E Lomo multiscope. It will magnify up to 2500x and looks like it can fit my digital camera.


Dig this little promotional blurb.

Ready to use "out-of-the box", the TMH4-BFis capable of performing urinalysis tests, protozoan hunts, mycological sporeanalysis, blood counts, clinical samples and more!
Protozoan hunts?!? Wahoo! I'll be just like Teddy Roosevelt! (Not so much on the urinalysis, though. I don't think Teddy and the Rough Riders were that big on looking at each other's pee.)

Teddy Roosevelt hunting for protozoa.

It would be a great gift for me, hint, hint, hint. If you all chipped in together, it wouldn't cost much per person. There must be, what, three regular readers of The Scratching Post? That's only $250 per person. A pittance when you consider all the drivel I spew on a daily basis for your entertainment.

Anyway, if you're interested in optics, check out Optics Planet. They've got all kinds of brands, including Barska.

4 comments:

Kelly the little black dog said...

The trick is to look for retired microscopes from schools or universities. There is a significant savings and they're still perfectly usable for an individual.

K T Cat said...

I've got a nice microscope right now, but it's 50 years old and won't take a camera adapter. What I need is a new, state-of-the-art microscope so I can get jpg files of what I see.

Kelly the little black dog said...

Do you want to sell your 50 year old scope? I'm surprised no one makes a digital camera adapter. Doesn't the eye piece come out? You should be able to find a camera that should fit in there? No? I know that you can buy an adapter for most older telescopes. I wonder if those might fit your eye piece. Also the old scopes have very nice optics.

Naomi said...

Quite worthwhile info, much thanks for the post.