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Message:: [QUOTE="rmpsrpms, post: 2666446, member: 31773"]The highest optical magnification you need for variety searches is 10x at the image plane. Most USB microscopes actually have only 1x-2x optical magnification, though a few with bigger sensors have perhaps 3x-5x. The remaining "magnification" is all mechanical, ie the sensor pixels are mapped to monitor pixels, and since sensor pixels are very small compared with monitor pixels, the multiplier is very large. Once you are viewing at 1:1 sensor vs screen pixel, you are at the highest magnification you can get with real information. Zooming farther gives no more information, so is "empty" magnification. The situation in a StereoZoom-7 (or any other compound microscope) isn't much different. The maximum pod magnification is 7x, though you can add an auxiliary lens to go higher. You can choose 10x, 15x, 20x, or even high magnification eyepieces. The eyepieces act to zoom-in on the image at the objective image plane, and give a similar effect to the mechanical magnification of the USB scopes. At some point, diffraction limits the resolution, and if you zoom further you will see no more information. So take the USB "magnification" numbers with several grains of marketing salt. When they say 500x, what they probably are actually giving you is 5x. Hard to believe they could be so disingenuous, but it's true.[/QUOTE]