Microscopy With A Film Scanner

NickFitz writes "If you've got a film scanner lying around, this site shows you how to use it as a microscope. "Your monitor displays images at about 70-90 dpi, so taking the example of my Mac monitor at about 75 dpi, we get a magnification of 4000/75 which is about x53. It's not a lot and isn't going to show the likes of blood cells, but it should give an interesting view of small transparent objects." Did you know that bees wings are hairy?"

Comments

If you're REALLY interested

[Hayzeus]

You can also get an actual microscope. A good compound microscope can be had for less than $220 used (check ebay or various used scientific equipment sites). These typically monocular scopes usually offer 3 objectives of around 10x, 40x and 90-100x, giving a total possibly magnification of around 1000x with oil immersion.

Want photographs? You can get surprisingly good results by simply holding a digital camera flush to the eyepiece. I have a few of these I did for fun here.

Have fun.