Two years ago, I wrote a post, with photos, about my Nikon Model S microscope. People who are Googling for this classic microscope often find my post, and it has been quite popular. In 2016, I did not have an “episcopic illuminator” for the microscope. I recently bought one on eBay. These devices for Model S microscopes seem to be fairly rare and don’t come up for sale often — at least not at a decent price.
An episcopic illuminator is a device that lights the specimen from above. What you see in the microscope is light reflected from the specimen. The opposite of this is “diascopic” illumination. In diascopic illumination, the light is below the specimen. What you see in the microscope is light that is transmitted through the specimen.
As you might imagine, both types of illumination are sometimes used together.
Somehow, my Nikon D2X camera seems to have infected me with a fetish for optics. Like my Nikon D2X camera, the Nikon Model S microscopes are now considered largely obsolete by professionals. But collectors and hobbyists snap them up for their quality and their continuing usefulness.
Unfortunately, the through-the-microscope photos here are of poor quality, because they were shot with an iPhone held over the microscope’s eyepiece.
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Grass as in the meadow type? I didn’t know they had barbs? It has to be a certain type. I am trying to recall if the grass irritated me and my siblings as we would run through my grandparents land and making large circles to lie in…
It is my understanding the iPhone camera (iPhone 7-X)lens are superior, but not as superior to your Nikon or that most recent one you’ve been using.
Hi Henry… There are many types of grass in the yard here, but this is probably Kentucky 31 fescue, which does indeed have barbs. I learned better long ago, but pulling grass with bare hands can be pretty rough on the skin.
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