Celestron 44340 LCD Digital LDM Biological Microscope

I'm pretty happy with this microscope that I purchased to use with my daughter. The screen is clear and responds to movement (rotifers) without any kind of low fps problems.

There is a distracting dark patch in the center of the LCD. The spot does not show up when you record a video, so it must be a problem with the LCD. The company has not yet replied to my support email on this subject I sent 4 days ago. Paint on the objective lens housings is worn looking and there is a scratch on the upper illuminator's plastic housing. Because of these things, the finish of the microscope has a used look.

The photo and movie recording interface is simple and easy to use. There is at least one misspelled word in a menu which makes the interface seem unprofessional. However it records acceptably. The video it creates is in the Windows .wmv format.

This is the only budget LCD microscope I was able to find through the Internet. The support structure is not metal, but appears durable. There is only one adjustment knob, but it is capable of rather fine adjustments, even at maximum resolution. Specimen adjustment has considerable range and allows for satisfactory fine tuning. Compared to viewing through stereoscopic lenses or the way-back-when single eyepiece, this is a tremendous improvement. Being able to take pictures just makes it that much better. I am very satisfied.

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I had an ordinary optical "200x" microscope and saw a few shaky, interesting things in a drop of water on a glass slide, I but had no good way to take a photo. Holding a digital camera up to the eyepiece was problematic at best. I'd heard of USB microscopes that connected to a PC, such as the QX3. Checking the reviews on Amazon quickly dissuaded me from that. Then I found the Celestron 44340. It had a built-in 2MP digital camera. Images were saved to internal memory and transferred to the PC via USB cable, or to a SD card. I was also concerned about getting good images. In books like Guide to Microlife (ISBN 0-531-11266-7), there were excellent photos in darkfield illumination, as well as the usual brightfield. The Celestron 44340 did both, although darkfield only worked at the 4x and 10x objectives. I got a set of glass slides, glass cover slips, some depression slides, eyedroppers, and containers. After the summer rains, there were many places to collect samples, as well as from shorelines of rivers and lakes. I was able to successfully image in brightfield and darkfield rotifers, amoebas, flatworms, copepods, ostracods, shrimp hatchlings, vorticella, bursaria, diatoms and algae, and a variety of fast-moving ciliates. In addition to digital photos of up to 2 megapixels in size, I also recorded movies of a few seconds to a few minutes, sometimes switching between 4x magnification to 10x or 40x to get more details, and even switching between brightfield and darkfield. If I found something interesting, I could use software to extract a still image. The only CON I can think of is that when the microscope is turned off then back on, the internal date and time resets to 1/9/2031 8:00 PM, so any photos or movies taken all have that date, unless you manually set it every time.

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I ended up returning this item for a replacement because it had a dark spot in the middle of the LCD. Once I received my replacement it did not have a dark spot but now there was debris internally that could not be removed. I ended up sending it back for a refund. However, I did order another style of a Celestron Microscope without the LCD screen. I give this product 3 stars because the concept and viewing options for this unit is incredible. It is also very easy to use and very lightweight. it just so happened I did not receive a "keeper".

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The microscope/camera combination is great in every way except one very important feature, the top light is inadequate. It is too far away and not bright enough to light solid specimens. It does work fantastic for specimens that light can pass through.

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