Transmitted Light Microscopy

Transmitted Light Microscopy generally requires lower light intensities than fluorescence microscopy, allowing smaller, passively cooled light sources to be used. Tungsten-halogen lamps, predominant for many years, have been replaced by solid-state microscope light sources, for largely the same reasons that they have supplanted mercury arc lamps in widefield fluorescence microscopy. In particular, the spectral distribution of solid-state light sources does not vary with output intensity, an important advantage in terms of consistent color rendition.