Hello Confocalists! Over the last few months there has been illuminating discussion of the benefits of coverslip-free water / saline immersion lenses... Several companies now produce fabulously expensive immersion lenses that are supposed to have highly corrected symmetrical point spread functions. I understand the theoretical value of such a lens, especially for deconvolving images, but I am wondering how much improvement they provide in the real world of living tissues and optically mismatched balanced salt solutions... Has anyone tried and compared such lenses with more conventional long working distance immersion lenses? Are they worth paying 3x - 5x more for? Thanks! IAN Professor Ian Gibbins Department of Anatomy and Histology Flinders University of South Australia Phone: +61-8-2045271 FAX: +61-8-2770085 e-mail: [log in to unmask]