Good day!
I'm hoping to get a reasonably cheap trinoc with my Christmas money, and I was wondering if people had any experience with those available on eBay.

I don't want to direct link in my first post, but reasonably good looking trinocs are available from various Indian and British companies for $300 - $500, and they have good feedback. I'm sure I can sub in a new camera, so the one that comes with it should be sufficient for starters.

Do people have any opinion on reasonably priced trinocs in general? I'm mostly interested in Eukaryotes at the moment, but I'd like to be able to move up to oil immersion and proper staining.

Thanks. Talk to you later.

I don't know about trinocs...I would suggest to start out with prokaryotes like E.coli. Even the experts use E.coli and do complicated stuff with it.

A typical microscope is a binoc, it has two eyepieces. A trinoc has a third "eyepiece" if you will mounted on a different part of the microscope. This third eyepiece is usually used for mounting equipment like cameras.

And actually, for microscopy, working with Eukaryotes is not particularly difficult as long as all you are doing is visualization. The sorts of experiments you are doing are molecular and involve genetic engineering. This is significantly more difficult with Eukkaryotes.

Thanks guys.
I'm probably going to start with selective breeding of fungi, and the microscope would be pretty convenient for gauging spore and mycelia characteristics.

Of course, it would be awesome to insert a florescent or bioluminous gene complex, but that's well in the future.
If and when I gain the ability to use plasmids, I'll probably use E. Coli, all right.

I have a little set up with petri dishes, laminar flow hood, UVC lamp etc., and I'd like to move to the next level.
Do you reckon these scopes would be of sufficient quality?

The reason I want a trinoc is to mount an HD webcam and take photos and videos including time lapse.