The achromatic objectives from Zeiss-Winkel were surprisingly good. Here you can read in which aspects they differed from later Zeiss achromats.

To get the best out of a microscope objective, it is important to use the correct eyepiece. In this section some tests that I conducted will be described.

Achromats are very well suited for microphotography and better corrected objectives don't always give better images. In this section I compared several types of objectives.

A simple Abbe condenser with an aperture of 1.2 can easily be modified to serve as a condenser for darkfield,  phase contrast and circular oblique illumination.

With a few simple tricks, the illumination can be altered in a way that greatly enhances the visibility of specimens. With an uneven illumination, called oblique illumination, contrast and resolution are increased.

With a simple educational microscope a lot can be seen. With some optimisation of the illumination you can make a great instrument out of your student microscope.

Combinations of different eyepieces can give good results as a projection eyepiece. Considerably less chromatic aberration occurs compared to an ordinary eyepiece that is raised.

Hybrid eyepieces can very well be used as projectives in combination with microscope cameras. When using microscopes with finite optics, better images are obtained in this way than with camera-specific reduction lenses.

With a simple modification, a normal eyepiece can be turned into a good projective for photography.