Magnification levels: A guide for digital microscopes

When choosing a microscope, it’s important that you know your magnification needs. This will depend on your sample, its size and what level of detail you need to see. Afterwards, you can to find a microscope that meets your magnification needs with a simple calculation.

In this blogpost, we’ll guide you on how to calculate the magnification capabilities of any digital microscope.

WHAT DETERMINES MAGNIFICATION LEVELS

In order to calculate the magnification capabilities of a digital microscope, you need to know:

The formular then is: Width of monitor divided by field of view.

Any microscope will of course have a magnification range.

To know the lowest possible magnification capabilities of the microscope then, use the minimum field of view. And vice versa, to know the highest possible magnification capabilities of a digital microscope, divide the monitor width by the maximum field of view on that monitor.

Example 1 – 24’’ monitor:
Let’s assume we’re using a PRESTIGE with a +10 lens and a 24’’ monitor. In this case, the width of the monitor is 531 mm, making the minimum field of view 125.1 mm.

To know the minimum magnification capabilities with this setup, we’ll divide 531 mm with 125.1 mm. This equals approximately 4.2, meaning that the PRESTIGE as a minimum will magnify a sample 4 times on a 24’’ monitor and with a +10 lens.

Using the same formular, we’ll realize that the maximum magnification capabilities with the same setup is around 133x.

Example 2 – 27’’ monitor:

By changing the monitor to a 27’’ monitor, we’ll change two factors in our equation: Monitor width and field of view. This ultimately changes the maximum magnification capabilities of the PRESTIGE to 145x.

In other words, if you need higher magnification levels than what your current setup allows you, it might not be necessary to change microscope. In fact, start out by simply changing the monitor.

MAGNIFICATION LEVELS ON TAGARNO DIGITAL MICROSCOPES

Below is a table with the magnification levels for each TAGARNO digital microscope on a 24” monitor.

Note that each lens has different magnification ranges. Which microscope and which lens you should choose depends on your object and what magnification levels you need.

For more information on the technical capabilities of each microscope, we refer to the technical specification pages or product manuals.