More about part: Leitz Wetzlar Proj 4x microscope photo eyepiece 23.2mm | Ortholux / Orthoplan and Prado projection compatible (ID: 99848)

Description

Leitz Wetzlar projection microscope eyepiece with 4x magnification

Projection eyepieces are special microscope eyepieces used to project the microscopic image onto the sensor of a camera. Many microscope photo tubes and trinocular heads have a seat for a projection eyepiece.

Leitz projection eyepieces of this magnification carry several different markings. You will find "Proj.-Ok. H4x", "Proj.-Ok. P4X" and - as on the item offered here - simply "Proj. 4x". The letter H stands for the Huygens design. Leitz also made projection eyepieces of other magnifications, 2.5x among them, so the 4x version is not the only one in this family.

The eyepiece is intended for microscopes with a mechanical tube length of 170 mm. The older Leitz stands are corrected this way, Orthoplan, Ortholux, SM and SM-D among others. Later microscopes of this brand already work with a 160 mm tube. In Leitz optics of this generation part of the chromatic aberration correction is deliberately moved from the objective to the eyepiece, so matching an eyepiece to an objective is not merely a mechanical question here.

Despite its name, this eyepiece behaves differently from a typical projection eyepiece. It does not form a real image at a fixed distance, but projects the image to infinity - exactly like an ordinary viewing eyepiece. This makes it excellent for the afocal method, that is, photographing with a camera that keeps its own lens placed above the eyepiece. Leitz itself built its photographic adapters on precisely this method.

Leitz "Proj." eyepieces also found use outside microscopy. Eyepieces of this family were part of the microprojection attachments for the Leitz Prado and Pradovit projectors, which threw the image of a specimen onto a screen for a whole lecture room. If you are completing such an attachment, this is exactly the part.

Use in a microscope with a 160 mm tube length remains a matter of your own DIY modification. Mechanically the eyepiece fits any 23.2 mm seat, but the intermediate image is then formed in a different place, so focus and image scale will come out differently from what the manufacturer intended. There is, however, a route that gives a beautiful combination: into a microscope of another manufacturer you fit a Leitz Wetzlar objective computed for 170 mm, and this eyepiece above it. The optical path is then entirely Leitz - objective and eyepiece work as they were designed to, and only the stand remains foreign, a PZO or a Carl Zeiss Jena one for instance.

The "compatibility" section lists the microscope models this eyepiece can be used with, but that list is of course not complete. This projection eyepiece can be used with any microscope of any manufacturer, as long as it has a tube or another seat for an eyepiece of 23.2 mm diameter - subject to the difference between 160 and 170 mm tube length (I write about this above).