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The second prism just realigns (co-linearizes?) the orthogonal components
so they can interfere at the detector.  If they are diverted by the sample
it is possible they could be somewhat realigned 'naturally', but I think
you would get pretty poor contrast relying on this 'chance' method.

Craig


On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 9:26 AM, MODEL, MICHAEL <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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> We have an Olympus with objective-specific splitting prisms on the
> condenser and a common combining prism on the objective side. My
> understanding is that the purpose of the splitting prism is to form two
> parallel rays that would be coherent. Parallel rays exist even without the
> prism and can be more or less coherent, depending on the separation between
> them. So I guess it is possible that a DIC image might form with only one
> combining prism.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Stanislav Vitha
> Sent: Friday, January 06, 2012 11:00 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: chromatic aberration
>
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> Mike,
> that is really interesting.  What microscope do you have? Does it have one
> a
> common objective prism and specific condenser prisms (as in Olympus) or a
> common condenser prism and specific objective prisms (Zeiss)? Are you
> saying
> you get a true DIC image with just one Nomarski/Wollaston prism (behind the
> objective)?  I did not think this could work, except for a setup like the
> PlasDIC
> from Zeiss (but I really never fully ondertood how it works).
>
> Stan Vitha
>
>
> On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 09:27:39 -0500, MODEL, MICHAEL <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> >Thanks to all who responded to my question. But I also wanted to mention
> that not only new objectives need to be tested. Same goes for Wollaston
> prisms! I found that quite often DIC images look better with Wollaston
> prisms
> designed for other objectives or without any condenser prism at all! Since
> the
> prisms cost around $1000 I wanted to share this observation with the
> microscopy community.
> >
> >Mike Model
>