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Infinity corrected objectivemicroscope

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I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this situation I've come across. I'm essentially recreating a homemade microscope that my understanding would suggest shouldn't work. This setup uses a 10X Olympus PLAN N objective attached to a beam splitter to provide illumination. Then, 55 mm worth of extension tubes connect to a camera (Point Grey Grasshopper3 with a 1/1.2" sensor). There is no tube lens between the infinity corrected objective and the camera sensor (other than the beam splitter).

Infinity corrected objectivewithout tube lens

Presumably, we aren't actually realizing the actual magnification this objective is designed to provide (in fact, its about half what it should be the sensor is 8 mm tall and a ruler placed in the view shows about 1.5 mm across the short dimension of image).

It is just that if working distance of the objective lens would be changed, the camera can image at different distances.

Image

Infinity-correctedobjectivelens

Just like any other lens, Objective lens is a lens, without the Tube lens also it will form an image by following the Lens equations, Lens Equations.

It's also possible that you don't have it focussed at exactly it's working distance. Remember the objective is just a (complex) lens. It only produces an image at infinity when the object is at a particular distance. If you put the object further away from the lens the image will be formed nearer than infinity.

Infinity corrected objectiveformula

Can someone clarify what the light path looks like here and how we are actually able to see an image? Is it possible that the image quality is actually really poor, but we just seem to be getting results that are more than suitable for how we are using it?

My understanding of how infinity corrected microscope systems works would seem to suggest that this shouldn't work, but a correctly oriented and seemingly undistorted image shows up on the camera.