> >From a vendor:
>
> If you want to scan large areas you need a low mag lens.
> If you want high resolution in depth as well as x-y you need a high NA lens.
> The lower the mag, the lower the NA, so compromizes are made.
>
There is another way to scan large areas.
First I would like to ask
Q1 What is a large area? 100um wide, 1mm wide, or what?

Most people use a commercial confocal microscope that uses beam scanning
techniques. If you have the technical ability, or know womeone who does,
then you could use a stage scanning microscope.

At Sydney University we have a stage scanning microscope which we are
developing as a research tool. It easily scans images 100um+ wide.
With modifications it should be possible to provide images that are
1mm wide (x and y axes).
I should add that we use x40, NA=1.4 oil objectives for these experiments
to get all the resolution benefits.

Therefore IT IS possible to scan a large area with high magnification.
You just need to switch to stage scanning and not beam scanning

Pal

ps see our web pages at
        http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/physopt/

The exciting thing we are doing with our microscope is that we are developing
it to operate in transmission. For this to work well (remember problems occur
due to diffraction, etc in transmission) you need to use adaptive optics.
Several weeks we started to close the loop on tip/tilt correction.
Unfortunately the section on our web page about this project is a little
under developed, but bear with us.
--
Pal Fekete
Physical Optics              _--_|\     ph :    int + 61 2 9351 6874
Physics Building A28        /      \    fax :   int + 61 2 9351 7727
University of Sydney, 2006  \_.--._x    email:  [log in to unmask]
AUSTRALIA                         v     http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~fekete