While trying to take the initial waves of pictures for the tobacco seed experiment I discovered the problem of trying to get enough detail. I settled for using some random lens we had in the lab and I created a setup to keep the camera, lens, and sample in line to take a good, clear image.

Then I ordered some lenses that would screw onto the front of Koch’s Nikon D40 from amazon. Well I got the second lens today and I did a quick compare of the two systems which you can see above.

The first lens is a 10x lens from Opteka. It seems to be well constructed and nicely comes with a cap so I can leave the camera setup and protect the lens. The second lens is actually a set of lenses from Sakar. There are four lenses in the set and they are labeled +1, +2, +4, and +10 which I’m guessing is actually the magnification. The cool thing is you can chain them to increase the power of the lenses. The most I can go is using the +10 and +2 because I can’t focus beyond that magnification. The photo above was taken with that setup.

It appears that the Opteka lens is slightly more detailed and may have better color production. In that image you can actually see more root ‘fro then with the other lens(es). I will take more pictures tomorrow to do a deeper analysis, but the results look promising. Also of note that the 10x lens seems to have the same magnification as the +10 and +2 combo, which is interesting to say the least.