Because of studies in Oslo on Friday and Saturday last weekend, I didn’t get out collecting. But the weekend wasn’t a complete waste of time! Of course I learned something new at my math-study, but the real reward was resulted by going to IKEA. Not to eat meatballs with lingo berry jelly, but to look for a new lamp for my living room.

Not everything from IKEA is worth mentioning, the lamp replaced by the new one was from IKEA, and didn’t “live” long… Yes, I checked the bulb. Anyway, I’m not writing a blog to talk about my living room lamps! The reason is that I got new lights for my stereoscope, and I think they are worth a notice!

I have a more than 20 years old scope, and the lighting was bought at the same time. Bulb have been switched once, so it’s been a good light source, but with some drawbacks. That it’s a yellow light is one of them, making photographing difficult. Either you need a blue-filter on the light-source, or you need a camera with adjustable white-balance. I only have the first…

What I found at IKEA was a LED-lamp, bright white light, and the best part, it have a 57 cm long flexible arm! Second best is that it’s pretty cheap, compared to other light-sources for scopes, costing 256 Norwegian kroner, or about 33 €/51 US $, today’s value. A drawback is that the LED’s can’t be replaced, but with an estimated lifespan about 50000 hours I think it’s still a good option. It’s not using a lot of power either, using only 3,5 W….

So here are some pictures of the gear, both with my scope and used for macro photographing:





As said the light is bright white, making then suitable for photographing, and not only micro photographs, also ordinary mineral photographs. The lights I bought are on a heavy table stand, but you can also get them with clips. The clips might be even more useful for the scope, since they then can be attached directly to the scope stand, and then the light will follow the focusing. Here are a couple of picks taken with the new LED-lights, both micro and macro:





To those thinking I’m doing advertising for IKEA; I have got permission from Jolyon to put this product information on my blog. I was so happy getting a new light source for a low price, not paying 1000 US $, so I think it’s worth bring out to the crowd, telling it’s possible to get pretty good equipment, without going bankrupt…

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