Microscopes for Bacteria

[Braden Crashball254]

I work for a bacteria manufacture, I wanted to see if anyone had experience with using modern microscopes. I would like to watch bacteria have an impact/ breakdown crude oil. is this even possible to record or observe? Any suggestions on types of microscopes.

 

There was a brand I have seen advertised a lot on my youtube feed, but I don't see them anymore. 

[lewdicrous]

2 hours ago, Braden Crashball254 said:

is this even possible to record or observe?

We use compound/dissecting microscopes from Olympus equipped with cameras that can connect to a computer.

One of the cameras is connected directly to a monitor and the images are saved into an SD card inserted into said camera.

The other camera is connected to a computer and we use a software to take the photos.

As for recording, we only take photos so I don't know if they are capable of taking videos (at least the cameras that we have, the company might offer ones that take videos, but I haven't checked)

[MartyS]

If you want to take video of bacteria you'll need a high quality microscope and a high sensitivity camera.  The biology department where I work has a bunch of high end ones that cost thousands.

 

If you are on a budget do a search for "swiftcam", there are tons of options and loads of clones so the price varies from $300 to $800, and I've only used them with a telescope, but they are marketed as cameras for microscopes.  If you get a medium quality microscope in the same price range you could probably get some video of bacteria. 

 

The darkness of crude oil might be an issue but I would think a thin film on a slide would let enough light through.  Also bacteria have a wide size range, what magnification you will need depends on that, higher magnification means less light and makes it harder to do video and you have to do long exposure images.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

Microbes are at the edge of what you can see with optical microscopy, so by all intents and purposes you'll need a good one. You'll probably also want one that can do illumination in both transmission and reflection, preferably a binocular one too. Avoid euromex and amscope, they got crap quality optics that can give you a major headache if you use them for any length of time, and they really suffer from chromatic aberrations badly. The usual optics scumbags (Zeiss, Nikon, Leica and Olympus) are all good to go, definitely consider second hand. Biology microscopes are pretty common finds on places like ebay. Metallurgy and wafer inspection microscopes *should* be capable of doing most of the things biology microscopes do, but they tend to lack the holders for slides, etc. So your mileage may vary, but be sure to read up on the bits you need to make it work, because sometimes they're not complete.

 

There's a pretty big microscope enthusiast community online, might be worth lurking around those places for a while to see what's good and what's bad. That being said, in Europe, Zeiss and Nikon actually sell directly to consumers, though it's pricey as hell - I paid close to €2k for my stereomicroscope for electronics assembly. Olympus's distributor didn't want the business last time I tried.

 

In terms of cameras, check the software before buying a cheapo, even the allegedly better ones (e.g. Jenoptik's ProgRes Capture software) are sometimes utter garbage. Yet others might have excellent software, but require an expensive yearly license to work.