Microscope Era

Yesterday I was given perhaps my coolest Christmas present ever from my brother in law Rob Sylvain-- a stereo microscope. It is small, lit by LEDs, and is rechargeable and portable, so I can take it into the "field".  It has magnifications of 10x or 30x, unless I change the eyepieces, but this is suitable for my purposes, mostly to look at 3d objects and textures in more detail. This morning I was messing around with it and I discovered that I can hold my little Fuji Finepix J10 camera up to the eyepiece and actually focus on the magnified image, and take fairly decent pictures. So I pulled out my box of oddities-insects that died in the car, bones I found in a friend's garden, seaweed pods, things lots of people like me have around, and I went at it.