NIKON H-3

PHASE CONTRAST McARTHUR-TYPE PORTABLE MICROSCOPE

I would like to thank Dr Yuval Goren for allowing me to reproduce his image of my Nikon H3 here, which he was kind enough to sell me. This is the phase contrast version of the famous Nikon H inverted McArthur-type microscope. The phase contrast version is quite a bit less common than the brightfield version. Because the phase ring adjustment is performed at the factory, condensers for phase contrast vs other applications are not interchangeable. Although there is a brightfield setting (no phase ring) on this condenser, there is no iris diaphragm. This contrasts with the Cooke-McArthur, where the condensers are interchangeable and the phase ring alignment does not need to be adjusted in the microscope because of a finer mechanism locating the objectives under the light path. This is just one of the reasons I personally prefer the Cooke-McArthur. See the H & H3 manual for more details about this model.