Talk:Stereo microscope

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Science Mid‑importance

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Actual differences between stereo and compound microscopy

The reason that I added the inline tag (which maybe I should have made a section header tag) at the beginning of the section "Differences from normal optical microscopes" is because it's an error to describe the simple fact that stereo microscopes are based on reflected light is the main difference between stereo and compound microscopes. That's because reflected light compound microscopy is very much a thing in fields like materials science, geology, and for some applications in biology where high-resolution viewing of opaque specimens is important.

In my own userspace right now, I'm working on an article on the topic of reflected-light microscopy, where right now there is no article on that topic at all - that's a very basic microscopy topic to be missing from Wikipedia. I think this article on stereo microscopy could also definitely use some expansion with an eye toward technical accuracy and topic depth. The Nothingale, et al page over at Nikon MicroscopyU, which is cited a few times in the article, is excellent and is a very good source for expanding this article. There's a similar chapter by Wilson, et al. from a neurology methods text here that's a good source as well.

Getting back to the question of what's the difference between stereo and compound microscopy, I believe that it's to do with, first, the stereoscopic nature of the view, but also the fact that the objective lenses in stereo microscopes are designed to offer greatly expanded field of view and depth of field compared to compound microscope objectives, but with some tradeoff in terms of numerical aperture compared to a typical compound microscope objective lens offering the same magnification. Modern stereo microscopes also offer zoom magnification, though that's a modern addition and not core to the definition of stereo microscope. However, I need to read through the source material (and it's lengthy) before making these changes.

Cheers! Peter G Werner (talk) 14:09, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]