Microscope slides: cavity or plain?

[brandonberry]

I have a really nice Olympus microscope (at least it seems nice to me) that my father gave me from his chemistry lab at his business and I was wanting to start using it to look at my rotifer cultures, do post mortems on fish, etc. I was getting ready to order slides, cover glass, etc. and was wondering if I should order some slides with cavities in addition to plain slides, etc. Any advice on what types of stuff would be most useful would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Brandon

[BaboonScience]

Brandon
Olympus makes a great microscope, great catch. What is the model of the scope.
I use plain slides for looking at algae and general work.
I use a Sedgewick Rafter cell for zooplankton work.
A cavity slide should work fine for general use. They tend to be a little thicker so be careful with the high magnification, it is easy to focus down into the cover glass and crack it.
John

[brandonberry]

Thanks for the reply. I definitely could use one of those Sedgewick Rafter cells. I'll try to look at the microscope tonight and reply with the model #.

[BaboonScience]

[Spracklcat]

Plain slides are just fine for almost everything, and are dirt cheap. I have yet to find the need for another type except when I use a hemocytometer to count cells (which are also quite expensive). Get yourself a few boxes of plain slides and start messing around with them, it's fun and you won't worry about wasting them. Get some cover slides and immersion oil too if you haven't already.

[brandonberry]

Thanks again for the help. My microscope is an Olympus CH-2 or CHS. The model # on the back says CHS, but the front says CH-2. I'd like to figure out a way to hook my Olympus C-750 camera up to it also if possible. The lens is not detachable but does have theads between the inner and outer section of the lens, which I guesss could be used to attach an adapter or something. I'm pretty much a novice at photography as well, so any advice on this would also be greatly appreciated.

[DrHsu]

oooh...a CH-2. That is a great scope. What you need to get is a ocular adapter for your camera. These things attach to the lens of your cam in different ways but mostly screw onto the filter threads. Then the other end replaces one of the oculars. With this set up, you should get pretty decent pictures...