Levenhuk Rainbow D2L Digital Microscope

The Rainbow D2L has the same optics, lighting and stage as our Rainbow 2L, with a camera added. It's a compound microscope with three glass objectives on a turret, a 10x eyepiece angled at 45 degrees and LED light from above and below, giving 40x to 400x, plus a 0.3 MP camera that goes into the eyepiece tube in place of the eyepiece and shows the slide on a computer screen.

The camera works with Windows, Mac and Linux through Levenhuk's software, takes its power from the USB cable, and records photos and video at 640 by 480. That's low by phone standards, enough for watching brine shrimp swim on a laptop or sharing a picture with a class but not for printing. The microscope runs from the mains adapter in the box or from three AA batteries, which aren't included.

Levenhuk's K50 experiment kit comes with it, with five prepared slides, five blank slides, forceps, a dropper, a microtome and a brine shrimp hatchery, along with a dust cover. If you don't need the camera, the Rainbow 2L costs less. Available in Moonstone.