Infinity spaces in Wild M5?

Hello all,

I recently inherited a lovely old Wild M5 stereomicroscope in good
condition with -- fantastically enough -- a motor-controlled Z-axis.
I'm investigating using this microscope for a quirky project (about
which more perhaps in another post). I'd ideally like to remove the
stereo head (with the eyepieces and rectifying prisms) and install a
digital camera above one side, and a high-intensity LED for epi-
fluorescent illumination above the other.

Now, this would be easy to work up if the M5's optics were set up to
be focused at infinity in the space between the zoom lenses and the
prisms. (Because I could, I think(?), just select a tube lens with an
appropriate focal length to get whatever magnification needed on the
CCD; similar for the collector lens in front of the LED.) The
microscopy primer website at FSU states that stereomicroscopes of this
type have such infinity-focused rays as part of the common-main-
objective design (http://www.microscopyu.com/articles/stereomicroscopy/
stereointro.html ). However, I'm not sure if this is the case for the
venerable M5.

Specifically, when I took apart the head, I found no tube lenses --
just prisms and the eyepieces (lack of tube lenses is good evidence
that the light isn't focused at infinity, no?). Manually holding the
eyepiece at a particular height over the zoom telescopes (with the
head removed) allowed me to bring the specimen plane into focus (more
evidence that there's no tube lens needed). Finally, there's only one
height at which this focus is possible, which strongly indicates that
the light exiting the zoom apparatus is not focused at infinity. But
perhaps I'm wrong?

If I am not wrong, does anyone have any idea how I'd go about figuring
out what focal length lenses, etc., I'd need to get a good image on a
CCD chip from the old Wild? (Which has, of course, no camera port.) I
guess I could get one of those c-mount adaptors that you stick in the
eyepiece tube. (But I'd still like to learn how I'd figure out what
lenses I'd need to build my own... )

Thanks,
Zach Pincus, PhD
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University
.

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