I used a Korima a few times and didn't like it. Poor image quality and you have to worry about nuking your crystals with UV. However, I haven't tried any other UV microscopes to compare. For most purposes outside of high throughput imaging, I'd rather just shoot the mystery crystals with xrays.
You may want to read Gill, "Evaluating the efficacy of tryptophan fluorescence and absorbance as a selection tool for identifying protein crystals", Acta Cryst F 66:364, which compares several microscopes. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20208182 ho -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi there. I don't know how much it costs, but I've used a Korima PRS-1000<http://www.korimainc.com/prs1000.html> serval times, and it appears to be fairly good. Although the image quality isn't great and there is still a bit of a learning curve for identifying small crystals and/or crystals buried in precipitate, I've found this microscope to be a very valuable tool. -Joel ================================================= Joel M. Guenther PhD Candidate, Department of Chemistry Kuriyan Laboratory http://jkweb.berkeley.edu/ University of California, Berkeley 176 Stanley Hall, QB3 Berkeley, CA 94720-3220 =================================================
