Today’s post shows a tooth of a sawfish imaged using an interesting microscope objective – a Zeiss Plan 1.6-5x zoom objective. This objective can be adjusted to give magnifications from 1.6x to 5.0x using a rotating collar. I’m sharing this as I have seen virtually nothing on this objective online.

In my microscope (a modified Olympus BHB), I couldn’t get the stage low enough to get 1.6x (the lower the magnification the longer the working distance), however I was able to get to about 1.7x. Here’s a set of images of a section of a tooth from a sawfish between 1.7x(ish) and 5.0x. They have been left at the full frame from the camera (a monochrome converted Nikon d850), and simple brightfield illumination was used.

And a picture of the slide (no makers name).

Overall, a nice performance. Not the highest NA for a given magnification (at 5x this is 0.1, vs my Nikon 4x Plan Apo which is 0.2), however a very versatile lens.

Here’s some images of the objective, and the entry from a Zeiss catalogue to provide some more information.

As always, thanks for reading, and if you’d like to know more about my work I can be reached here.