G'day,
 
>1)  What lenses should we have in order to serve 90% of all the
>people in the life science field?
>
>2) Is a UV laser necessary and what other options are available?
 
I'll leave these questions to those who know better.
 
>3) Software suggestions would be appreciated for 3D reconstruction as well
>as image analysis in 3D mode to determine size distribution volume etc.
 
Two good resources for information about 3D reconstruction/image analysis
software are:
 
  1. The reconstruction home page:
 
        http://biocomp.arc.nasa.gov:80/3dreconstruction/
 
  2. Lance Ladic's confocal microscopy software pages:
 
        http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/ladic/software.html
 
Regards,
______________________________________________________________________________
Chris Pudney                    Biomedical Confocal Microscopy Research Centre
[log in to unmask]                 Department of Pharmacology
http://www.cs.uwa.edu.au/~chrisp           The University of Western Australia
PH: (+61 9) 346 4571 FAX: (+61 9) 346 3469        Nedlands, WA 6907, AUSTRALIA