What's a good budget microscope? I'm a poorfag who

If you're spending less than about $300 all the scopes you can find on ebay or amazon are about all the same. Ebay, you might find some old used stuff from an actual lab, but it will cost more.

>>9078200
try to get a second-hand expensive one, because the cheap ones are all shit

If you don't need it for serious work just go to amazon or ebay and buy a childrens/bigginer glass.

If you only want small magnification (like 60-100x) you can buy an electronic LED microscope for pretty cheap (less than 20USD for 100x magnification) and they're also a lot easier to carry around to a river than a full sized one

For example something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0066KS7B2/

Sure, not great quality but it's cheap and it will let you see fly dicks

>>9078221
Define shit? I've used a lot in HS and College, how would quality be effected? Just a more blurry image?

>>9078225
Yeah, I just want something to fuck around with, nothing serious. the LED microscope sounds cool, but I'm looking more for a traditional one, just so if my friends ask I can look like I'm doing something important and not using a camcorder to peep on the life of miniature organisms.

>>9078244
>trying to trick people into thinking you're doing serious work

this falls apart the second they ask you why you're doing it

>>9078265
We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

File: mikromir_1.jpg (117KB, 700x529px) Image search: [Google]

117KB, 700x529px

>>9078200
As oculars, objectives and magnification do not matter for you, the only thing you should check is that you can attach a condenser between the lamp and mechanical stage. You can't see any translucent aquatic organisms with just a lamp.

With an appropriate condenser you can apply different illumination techniques, for example:
-Oblique illumination: Bends the 1st diffraction maximum of light away from the objective, so the background becomes translucent. Any objects in the water will have brightly colored edges.
-Dark-field illumination (pic related): Bends all the diffraction maxima away from the objective, so the background becomes completely black. Objects in the water will be bright.

>old research microscope given to me
>equipped for standard light, phase contrast, and fluorescence
>not a clue how to use it

How much more difficult is florescence than standard gram staining and equivalent techniques?

>>9078441
extremely. unlikely you will be able to do that anywhere outside of a lab.

>>9078446
Why is that? Is flourophore application that different than normal staining?