The SP8-DLS can from 7 july 2017 onward be booked as a standard confocal microscope. Please read this text completely!!
If you first want a short 10 minutes intro before you use the microscope. Please contact me, Ron Hoebe or Daisy Picavet.
The SP8-DLS is both a standard Confocal Microscope and a Lightsheet Microscope.
You can use the SP8-DLS as a standard Confocal but Lightsheet users have priority. Priority means, they can book for longer than 3 hours, and we can ask standard confocal users to shift their appointment to another time/date or Microscope.
Things you should know before you use the SP8-DLS as standard confocal microscope:
- This microscope has a 20x air objective, so do not use oil for this objective
- Be aware the table for your slide is lower than on the other microscopes. This means the objective can travel much higher in Z. This can damage your sample and the lens. So be Careful!
- The PC has two Windows logon profiles. Choose “Confocal only”! Do not change any settings in the software while starting up. (Please also do not enable AutoSave in the confocal mode).
- It has only a 40x oil and 60x oil objective for confocal use. The other objectives 1.6x air, 2.5x air, 5x air and 20x air can be used for confocal scanning, again do not use oil or better use another widefield or confocal microscope.
- LAS-X also has the new Stage Applications Click Here for details
- The microscope has a touchscreen similar to that of the SP8-SMD. To go in to manual mode you first have to select FLUO or BF (it is standard in COMBI mode after starting LAS-X).
- The manual Bright Field (BF) only works when you select the TLD/RLD mode of the transmitted light mode in the LAS-X software. You also have to keep the Transmitted light PMT enabled. (We think this is a bug in the system, Leica did not solve this yet).
- You have to put the Transmitted Arm of the Microscope in the lean back position to initialize the table. (The LAS-X software will tell you this).
- You cannot use DIC on this microscope while the DLS imaging unit is mounted. If you need DIC please use the other microscopes. (We try to changing the DLS imaging unit for the DIC Condenser to a minimum). You can use Bright Field when you select the TLD/RLD mode and enable the transmitted light PMT.
- The PC has a special storage for DLS data. Please only shutdown the PC if you are the last user of the day. Do this by selecting shutdown in the Windows start menu and wait (look at the LED’s on the PC) until it has switched off before you turn off the power.
Click here for detailed information and differences of the confocal microscopes in the Cellular Imaging Core Facility.
If you are still not comfortable with all this. Please ask us to help you the first time you use the SP8-DLS as a standard confocal.
For the DLS (lightsheet) user we give a special intro. And we help preparing samples.