Who's better? Amateur or Professional microscopy users? 

My nephew works in a laboratory and uses microscopes every day. When I told him I recently bought a microscope, he was surprised and asked "why". I told him that I nature journal and want to be able to look at samples of things I collect because I'm curious. The thought of him being a better microscope user never occurred to me. I'm 70 years old and, quite frankly, don't care if someone else is a better user than me. At my age, I'm just glad my mind is as such that I'm still curious and want to learn more about the world around me. BTW, I really enjoy your videos. 🥰

Hello. I'm just starting to get into this stuff. I'm glad to have found your channel.

Very good answer. As someone who spans the divide between professional and amateur I can vouch for the fact that many professionals are excellent at doing their job with a microscope while having relatively little knowledge of how it works or how to 'correctly' set it up (Köhler wise) - and honestly they don't care about that, as long they can make the right diagnosis from a biopsy for the patient (I am a pathologist). I recently did a poll of fellow doctors (mostly pathologists like me) about their level of education in microscopy and 15% of respondents admitted they never had any formal training on microscopy at any stage of their education from school all the way through to in-job training as a senior Dr. Nowadays of course there is a trend to ditch the microscope in favour of a computer screen (digital pathology). None of my peers who I worked with are in favour of this but it appears the younger generations are not going to get a choice - sadly - so they will never know how to look down a microscope.

Love your videos

neither on university nor in industry you ar independent and that ist the most important in real research. If for you the payment or equippment is the important thing in microscopy you only are a fotographer

on my opinion to find somthing new with an old Leitz is better than using an confocal laser scanning STED-fluorescencemicroscope

who can say that a aesthetical perfect microfoto ist better than that one which gives an anser to a scietific problem. Most of university profs which worket 50 years on the stuff are not interested to make beautifull microscop slides.

i used the word Leitz as a synonym for good microscops of the 80-s. Today they sell this MICROSCOPS OUT FROM UNIVERSITY LABORATORIES for some bugs. 50 years ago only professors owned such microscops and i dreamed of them. Today if i use such an instrument they call me an hobbiist.. The world is foolish

first of all a real good microscoper hase to build his owm microscope DIY

most of the so called professional microscoperers on university or industry are not interested in microscopy but in there carriers

i dont think that it was a good idea to computerise a microscope or to connect it with a camera. On my opinion the best you can do is drawing what you see or has prepared with a pencil on a sheet of paper and writing comments by hand

I don't pretend to know anything about microscopy at all, let alone 1/1000 as much as any seasoned professional microscope user in some research laboratory. I am definitely an an amateur, home user of "Old Leitz microscopes" (I have 4 Orthoplans). However the International Photography Awards decided that some of the work that I did on mine (fine art photography) was "better" than 260,000 other photographs that they received from 14,000 photographers in 120 countries, and awarded me non professional Fine Art Photographer of the Year. One of 22 category winners. If the criteria was to be "Better" than any other user of some or other microscope, in this very specific (and narrow) set of parameters, I guess it could be said that my work was "better".. I agree with Oliver that the word "Better" should be in quotes though, because it doesn't really mean anything, and can be applied to so many different areas. I don't consider myself to be better than any other microscope user (and I would definitely defer to other learned users - like Oliver - who have spent a lifetime learning their craft), but in this one narrow little area of microscope use, a jury of other people decided that my work was better..

Retired professional who works as an amateur....

Some armatures, who have an old Leitz microscope, ask nonsensical questions. They just want their ego pumped.

I would say amateurs, due to a keen interest, and not just a job, but there are exceptions.

Professional and studen users usually have access to better equipment. Amateur and novice users have to home their basic skills to compensate. An ameteur user can have once been a proffessional user.

there is no exact line in dividing professional and hobiists. Also as a natural scientist you should avoid experssions like better. There is no better microscop neither a better microscoper

Whether you are paid or not doesn't determine your skill level.

of coarse a amateur microscoper ist better than a professional, who do you think you are

better microscopist...........so al REM-microscopers will say that light-microscopers are blind....and they are right

what do you mean with better..................................you will get what you search. Really good microscopers go to industry and there they make more monney.........that is what you mean with better.........monney monney monney makes the world go around...The Winner of the game is sitting behind the most costy microscope....how foolish is that. By the way Leitz have made really good mikroscops, who came from Germany and not from China