Why a 3000x microscope magnification does not make sense! 

This is great. Everyone should watch this video before purchasing their first microscope.

This same scam applies to telescopes. In reality, the maximum usable magnification of a telescope is just a little bit more than the diameter of the objective lens or mirror in millimeters. A 200 mm primary mirror maxes out at about 240X. Yet manufacturers will claim magnification of 1000X or more for scopes with 50 or 60mm objectives.

You saved me from doing a stupid purchase. You explained my worries and questions so well. Thanks a lot for letting us know this valuable info!

I know from watching CSI, you just have to say "Enhance" it you see more.

I actually love your intro... It feels nostalgic. Like I'm back in grade school getting ready to watch something the substitute found in the library

the zoom in got me lmao

Well yeah, it's just like optical vs digital zoom. The microscope companies should advertise in terms of resolution, otherwise it's just misleading.

Scanning electron microscope: "Hold my beer."

The guy is correct, and accurate. But he NEVER ACTUALLY GETS AROUND to explaining why. I.E. good scientist, shyte teacher.

Randomly at exactly 4:37am I have found out I want this to be another hobby of mine and realized I should look up things to have a better understanding. I’m glad I did bc all I was focused on was the magnification. I’m glad I found this video. Thank you. You saved me a lot of money from people likely praying on beginners like myself.

Translation, you won't get good focus at high magnification.

don't know how I end up here, but I'm not complaining.

I agree the most part but i don`t think more than 100x is a waste. I have a 1976 microscope with 4 10 40 and 100oil and oculars ranging from 5 to 15. And to do the jump from the 10 to the 40x objective i put the 15x ocular with the 10x objective first so as an in between magnificaiton and it doesn`t loose any detail. What i mean is that the 10x objective for example has enought detail to magnify it`s image like 25 times with the ocular without loosing resolution (at least not perceptible)

When I was in 7th grade, my science class had some group projects and we got points off on ours for not listing a 1500x or whatever under a picture we had on our poster board. Thing is, it was blown up from an image in a book and the teacher wanted the book's magnification level on our blown up image. If you think about it, a magnification factor really only applies to the virtual image at the ocular lens. Your eye or camera will be receiving an image that's about half an inch or a centimeter wide. Take a picture and put it in a book or on a poster board and that factor no longer applies. The photography and printing affect the scaling of the image and therefore "magnification factor". Blew my mind that as a 12 or 13 year old kid I had to explain it and was still told I was wrong.

Hahahahahahaahah when he zoomed into his mouth 😂😂😂😂

Thanks for clarifying this! This always confused me how they got so high magnification.

4:49 is when the video starts

Okay, I get it. Then what specs should one be looking at? You said 'use other criteria' but it will help to actually spell them out.

Great video. I hadn't even thought about this, although the last microscope I used was an electron microscope so my expectation of what an optical microscope would be able to achieve had been slightly distorted! It's the same as this with telescopes also, even things like planets look much better at lower magnification.

I learned a lot. Thanks for the video, man.

In the first minute you show some Müller brand microscopes. Please note that "Müller Optronic" or "Müller Germany" is not a German optics manufacturer. "Made in Germany" is a protected attribute, "Germany" is not. Müller is one of the most common surnames in Germany. In the recent years a couple of Chinese companies have started brands with German names.

Thank you very much for your video, it is really very helpful for someone who is starting in the hobby as me. But I didn’t understood how can I determine the useful amplification for a set of lens. How can I choose between different lenses? Is there some kind of specification that determines their quality, or “sharpness” in certain amplifications?

Wow, I actually learned something today. Great explanation. If it wasn't for your visual examples I don't think it would have made much sense to me. 👍

Just found your channel! Really cool. When I was smaller I used to want to be a microbiologist but now that I’m 13 I want to be a pilot, but still love microbiology

No, you obviously need magnification and resolving power as well. But, yes, beginners are attracted by magnification. A single piece of perfect glass with no magnification so no lensing has maximum resolving power DEPENDING ON THE SOURCE OF WAVES, light or electrons so all details are preserved but you can't really see much of the details without using lenses Once you introduce lenses the image is distorted. The better lenses you have the better the resolving power For high magnification the resolving power becomes more important. Apochromatic lenses have less chromatic and spherical aberration and thus better resolving power. But even in low magnification they offer a sharper image. For example if you have a camera and a good objective lens you can digitally zoom and get more details than with lower quality lenses. Better quality lens are more expensive not higher magnification as explained in this video. Having the best possible lens is still not enough for magnifications over 1000x because the resolving power is limited by the wavelength of light. The higher the frequency / lower the wavelength the better resolving power. That is why electron scan microscopes are by far superior because electrons have much lower deBroglie wavelength.

You took the first 4 minutes to convey a short sentence worth of information. I had to check the timeline because I thought I restarted the video by accident somehow.

I was missing the explanation too. The explanation you added to the text is great! I think it is not possible to explain it that good in the video anyway, so now it's way better than it could have been originally.

Great review and information. Thanks and I have subscribed

tx for the explenation. So, what is the difference between low end and high end microscope if everything share the same features? is it only the quality of the device?

Really liked this. Almost everything you mention also applies to astronomy as well. Insane magnification leads to no or horrible imaging.

Great video. Your point was made very clear. Love your channel. Helpful imformation, thank you.

Thank you for this information! I am so happy when I come across a person who is more knowledgeable than myself on a topic, great!

You really didn't have to keep repeating the difference between magnification and resolution endlessly. I got it the first time.

Great stuff. Thanks! What stereo microscope would you recommend up to $300?

It's called marketing. Remember the bit wars of the 90's? The Super Nintendo and Genesis were 16-bit. The 3DO was 32-bit. Atari released the Jaguar which was 64-bit. They even said this in their ads. Their slogan was "Do the Math". The Atari Jaguar failed miserably and now it holds dental equipment.

Your advices surely helping microbiology students like me THANK you

Thanks for the infos, now if i were to look for a microscope what would be the specification I would need to recognize in order to have a good structure resolution of what Im magnifying ?

You want 3000x with good resolution, use a STEM. Visible light just hasn't got a small enough wavelength to resove fine details. I wonder though why they don't use EM waves of a shorter wavelength like UV with a photodetector that can actually "see" these wavelengths. Though something tells me they do.

Extremely informative and well done. Thank you very much.

Really helpful. Very clear explanation.

Thank you! As a Med-Bio student it is releaving seeing and understanding the specificity and the point of your advices. I am both glad and gratefull to you, for this clip. The only true microscope propper buying advice. Thanks to you, today i gained a few more criteria when considering purchasing my new ''toy''. :)

. Hi Microbehunter, I have just discovered your channel through this video, and I have to say I am very impressed, this exactly what I have been waiting for. This channel should be a first port of call for any student or amateur (like myself), I have just subscribed and I cant wait to see your next video. Thank you, Anthony Mataabro. .

Thank you for these informations!

If a company advertises anything more than 800x - don't buy. They are marketing kids 'scopes to innocent adults.

I have 100x objective and 16x eyepiece which makes 1600x magnification of my microscope, was this really true?

This guy talks fast. I had to turn it down from the usual 2x speed I watch all videos on to 1.5x speed.

As an amateur (actually not even that) thinking of getting some sort of magnifying device to examine the edges of knives, I found this video very enlightening. Thankfully to date I have only wasted a few bucks on cheapo digitals off Ebay. Thanks for posting.

Thanks for good pointers!

10 minutes of rambling, and you can't bother to explain WHY? This video is about 8 minutes too long for what was actually said.

Interesting and useful, but there's no need for this video to be almost 10 minutes. There's too much repetition, I would cut it down to 5 minutes or less.

Thank u. It was so helpful.

Greaaat video man!

Stop beating around the bush and explain why. I'm halfway through the video and it's beginning to sound like a shaggy-dog joke story.

But why haven't you listed these OTHER criteria for buying? What is the really important parameter to look for if we should ignore the magnification figures? How do you state a resolution of the microscope, for example? Is the focal length an important parameter?

Excellent explanation. Very useful and informative. Thank you and congratulations on the channel!

I think you did a great job pointing the issues out with the magnification BS ...

Very convoluted explanation. And too many repetitions. You can do better.

1600x with really good lenses and immersion oil makes absolute sense over 1000x.

Thank you for being so real and for true advice

The magnification on his mouth got me crying from laughter. Solid comedy gold.

We,ve got some pretty highend Leica scopes at my job and some of them go up to 400x and i can tell you , you can't see sh7t at that magnification!

I like how maybe a month ago I accidentally happened to watch that one random microscopy video of some bacteria or whatever. Since then RU-vid has recommended me more and more such videos. Now I'm watching this and thinking maybe I should get a microscope.

Thank you so much for this video! What would be the other criteria that you would look for in a microscope for beginners?

Thanks so much for the information,I am going to buy a microscope and now I know better. Thanks from Sweden!

comparing optical zoom with digital zoom doesnt debunk anything. 4:50

3000x magnification vs use camera to "zoom and enhance". I think we've traded one fallacy for another.

Thank you so so so much! You have taught me a lot.

Man, this vid made me sad.. but really appreciate the heads up and the free guidance!!

you don't talk about why those higher powers don't work. your example doesn't work either. by zooming after the fact you are reducing the resolution because there are fewer sensors being hit by the same area of sample. with your eye it's going to still be projected across the whole surface. I remember doing oil immersion in high school, so i'm guessing we're dealing with a refractive index issue at this level of magnification or are we also coming close to the resolution limit of light at those powers?

- A 1 mm² size object or area (1 mm x 1 mm) times 1000x will be like 1000 mm² or around 3.1cm x 3.1cm in area size. For example a tardigrade. - The biggest virus is Megavirus with 440nm diameter, so the area is 607904 nm² or 6.07904e-7 mm² magnified by 1000 then 6.07904e-4 = 0,000607904 mm². It's still too small for a microscope to see a virus then. If even 3000x magnification doesn't make sense, then how do people see a virus ?

Reminds me of when digital cameras. Especially in the early days but I guess it still happens where people just want more megapixels. But glass isnt good enough to resolve the resolution. My phone has over a 100 megapixel camera. But I guarantee a professional level 12 Megapixel camera will resolve an image better.

, thank you for clearing this up for me I had no idea

why am i watching this?

A whole lot of talking with very little said.

Very well said and shown

again, very good video

Insisting that a microscope's purpose is not to magnify is one of the stupidest things I've heard in my life. I can see he's trying to make certain points about the qualities of microscopes but he is going about it in the worst possible way.

The digital zoom analogy is appallingly bad. Microscopes use optical magnification which is entirely different.

Thanks! It's very helpful

Thank you for the insight and information.

CLICKBAIT! No explanation is given just the same thing repeated over and over again.

This video could’ve been 1000x shorter.

Thanks a lot. This is very useful.

Useful info sir thanks

your confusing magnification with zoom.. for 10 minutes

No. You're confusing magnification with zoom. They advertise high magnification, because that's exactly what they do. Thanks for wasting 9 minutes of my time.

What kind of adapter that u use for adapting eos camera to trinocular? I just bought a new microscope Olympus BX53, and i dont have an option to adapt my eos dslr canon camera to my microscope

I want to buy a microscope, which one do you recommend? im new.

I calibrate and repair lots of different microscopes, but I will think twice before I agree to rebuild another Olympus CX41 Phase Contrast unit. If you thought calibrating them at setup was stressful and tedious, rebuilding one under a homemade positive pressure hepa hood is a nightmare. Gods bless bearing retention fluid!

Hello. Let me start by saying I have really been enjoying your videos. Learning so much and I'm very inspired as I have picked up this new hobby. I wish I had seen this video before I bought my microscope. It is a most excellent microscope and every day has been a day of new wonders. That being said I could have saved some money by getting a 1000 rather than a 2500. I've already discovered that not only is it overkill but it is impossible to work with, with anything that isn't absolutely stationary. I wanted to be able to see viruses and Chromosomes and such and now I'm finding that I didn't need that high a magnification. Well, I learned the hard way but, no regrets. I still have an excellent high quality microscope because I didn't buy on magnification alone. I'm also am an astronomy enthusiast, so I've learned allot about the need for image resolution over magnification. Thing is with astronomy you can't observe anything on cloudy nights so I thought I needed something equally as interesting and so that's were I am today. I also wanted to tell you that when I found your videos I was captivated right away. Many other people make very technical videos that have no personality. Your videos are very engaging and have given m, in a very short time much joy in learning about everything I can see and do with my new passion. Thank you so much for what you do.

Awesome video. I am late to the microscope-party, (just getting started), but this video helps me out big time. It is on point, it has loads of valuable info and is very good to follow for everyone. Love it! Thanks for sharing. Gonna dive right into your other videos. 🍻

Thank you for explanation, but if not magnification, what specs should I pay attention to?

That side-by-side comparison makes the topic seem clear. Pun intended. Excellent explanation and demonstration!

Thanks, I really thought, that the magnification ist very important. You opened my eyes. What criteria are important if you want to record to DSLR ?

Thank you. You are a great teacher.

My boy got ANGRY

Very good information......thanks a lot ....

Loving the microscope montage!

Dont even have an interest in microscopes, but this was very interesting to watch. Great video, that lip zoom in was quality