Equipment for spore microscopy for fungi?

[adam24061]

Just wondering if anyone has any ideas about the requirements (e.g., magnification) for equipment for photographing fungal spores, or recommendations?

[AdamWargon]

Welcome, fellow Adam!

Here are a posts that might be helpful:

@charmedlife

I found this to be helpful: https://www.mushroomexpert.com/microscope.html

@cthawley

Some existing threads that may be relevant:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/digital-microscope-for-students-chromebooks/38747
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/new-years-resolution-low-toying-around-with-a-digital-microscope/47989
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/the-smartphone-with-a-microscope-camera-arriving-at-last/21197/9

@knotwoood

I have done a bit of research into this topic for the same reason - from what I have read, there are many cheap/mass-produced options that are functional but not of a high build quality. I’ve seen these for $250-400 online. The way to go for a well-built, reliable scope seems to be to get a second-hand one from an older, more reputable brand if you can find a good/trustworthy seller. Brands like Leica, Meiji, Zeiss, Nikon, Olympus, etc. I have seen some promising ones for $400-700. These are obviously not cheap, and for basic use, something from AmScope like this brightfield binocular scope w/ camera might be a good tool for the job: https://amscope.com/collections/compound-microscopes-brightfield/products/b120c-e5

@annkatrinrose

I got an Omax microscope on sale on Amazon some time ago. It is a compound microscope with 100x oil immersion objective, which may be what you need for fungal spores and such. I’ve been very happy with it. If I remember correctly, it was less than $500 with a couple of accessories I got along with it (such as a stage micrometer to calibrate rulers). It has a USB camera that plugs into a USB port on my PC or laptop and that turned out to be very convenient for teaching online as I could switch to microscope live view during class meetings simply by changing the camera in zoom. It can also of course be used to take digital pictures, either with the software that came with the microscope or directly in Photoshop. As an example, here’s a moss observation where I used the microscope to look at spores.

[adam24061]

Thanks for those!