Re: [Leica] olympus vs leica

[Zeissler@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/25/99 10:31:48 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ewelch@ponyexpress.net writes:

> Interesting. I photographed the niece of Aldus Huxley (Brave New World) who 
>  is doing research in frog hearts for the University of Missouri-Columbia 
>  medical school. When she noticed my Leicas she said "I will only use Leica 
>  microscopes. It's hard to convince my budget committee to spend 5 times 
>  over what some other doctors use, but when I use my microscope all day 
>  long, the Leica makes the difference. It has a 3-dimensional quality the 
>  others don't have."
>  
>  I swear, I did not bring up the 3-dimensional thing! Her microscope does 
>  have a binocular eyepiece. So 3-dimensional qualities would pay in eye 
>  relief for long-time use, I'm sure.

This brings up a good point.

I spoke with my wife again about microscopes after posting the message this
morning and she said it depends on the requirements of the facility.  Where
she works, they require flat field and not 3-D (she has binoc eyepieces, but
the monoc image is being split), so she can use other 'scopes without a
problem.

She indicated the ranking in 'scopes were 1) Zeiss, 2) Leitz and 3) Olympus in
outright optical quality.  The ranking for functionality (which can consist of
a variety of things, including computer motion control) is 1) Olympus, 2)
Leitz and 3) Zeiss.  She also mentioned Nikon as a player, but a distant 4th
on these rankings.  Another issue in the mix is purchase cost and maintenance.
Some of these products can be priced above a million dollars US (depending on
the research involved), so that has to be considered as well.

Her particular group uses Leitz, Olympus, Zeiss and Nikon, in that order.

/Mitch