Looking For Recommendations For A Digital Microscope

I haven't seen any recent posts about digital microscopes and was wondering if any one had any recommendations.
I am looking for something that does 100x. I can't figure out from some of the listings on ebay whether they are true 100x or just a digital zoom.

Plug "microscopes" into the SCF search and your cup will runneth over with information.

All the information I have seen on SCF is over a year old and doesn't answer the question about the zoom function.

You're correct that terminology is critical. You want products that advertise "optical magnification" and not "effective magnification" or "100X digital zoom". Unless "optical magnification" is in there, the glass lens is not doing the magnification. It won't come cheap and price also may help disambiguate this. I would expect to pay $500 or more for a unit with true 100X optical. Hope this helps.

As a microbiologist and a stamp collector, I'm curious why a stamp (or coin) collector would need a 100X magnification.

My research microscope is capable of optical magnifications of 100, 200, 440, and 970X, but I never need it for examining stamps.

That's just WAY more magnification than I can use. Instead, I use 2X, 4X, and 7X hand lenses and find those adequate. I would think that 20X would be the absolute maximum I could ever possibly need. Remember that as magnification increases, the field of view decreases (you can only see a much smaller part of what you're looking at).

Taking flyspeccing to new levels...

Does this look like laid paper?


I think that I have a Z grill...


Don

100X is occasionally used in the analysis of paper composition. An example is the following, at p. 98, showing 100X views of fibers for assessment of the materials used in Mexican stamp papers.

https://www.analyticalphilately.org...ceedings.pdf

And now that I see the potential, I understand the reason.

It's the same reason there is a need for electron microscopes, albeit far fewer of them are needed than are standard light microscopes.

I have a digital microscope, but rarely use it. I found that my scanner works just as well if not much easier to use


Peter

Thanks for the responses.
I was looking at one to serve several purposes - kids could use it for school/fun and I could use it for my stamps. At $500 for an optical 100x, I'll pass.
I think I'll just go the cheaper route with the digital zoom and just use it for myself.
If I find one that works well I'll post it here for future reference.

Here is a thread from the Stamporama site discussing microscopes. My post is the seventh message.

Vince

https://stamporama.com/discboard/di...22413#163550