My first microscope.
After about 5 years studying mushrooms I decided to purchase my first microscope.  Here is a copy of the diagram in my high school botany lab book that shows the scope I used when I studied botany for three semesters.
Microscopes came a long way since then.  After studying what is available and what I could afford, I decided on a 3090 Digital Microscope by Accu-Scope from Great Scopes.

Great Scopes has a very good guide for buying a scope.  It is a 273kb PDF document.  It answered all my questions about the modern microscope.  I like the idea of studying the image on my computer screen instead of squinting into the eyepiece.  Pictures at a click of the mouse also attracted me to this scope.  No more sketching what I saw as I had to do with my high school scope.  I will be now able to get more information about the mushrooms I find, and share it with others.

Here are the complete specs of the scope:

• Stable stand with easy location of controls.
• Digital Monocular Head with built in digital imaging system
• Connects to Windows Compatible computer by means of USB 2.0 Cable (included). Windows 2000 or XP required.
• 4x, 10x, & 100xr (SL) Oil Achromatic Objectives & 40xr Semi-Plan Objective
• 10x Widefield Eyepiece
• Built in Mechanical Stage (132mm x 125mm) with X and Y movement of 65mm x 30mm on ball bearings with coaxial controls, sports sub-stage controls for ease of use.
• Sub-stage focusable Abbe condenser (N.A. 1.25) with iris diaphragm
• Co-axial coarse and fine focusing mechanism system
• Metal focus gears, sturdy metal alloy frame
• Illumination 20W Halogen (variable) 110v AC.  220v available
• Micrometrics™ SE Imaging Software for still image & video capture, processing and measurement. Features:
  • Still images and video can be captured in more than 18 popular formats including JPEG, TIFF, BMP, AVI, PPM, PGM
  • Darkfield Simulation
  • Flatfield Correction
  • Micrometer calibration and Micrometer overlay on image, auto-calibration of images captured at various magnification
  • Auto pencil drawing from image
  • Image Annotation features include:
    • line, rectangle, round rectangle, ellipse, polygon, arrow
    • text within or without various bounding shapes
    • color and numerous styles for line arrow and shapes
    • moving and resizing
    • property editing
  • Image manipulation features include:
    • Mirror
    • Rotate
    • Post capture color correction
    • Ultra fast hue, saturation, intensity, gamma adjustment
    • Contrast maximization
    • Adaptive edge emphasis
  • Built-in database allows sort, query, and exchanging of data with image processing window
  • Printing features include:
    • Auto alignment and pagination
    • True size image printing
• Nylon Dust Cover

• 30-Day Money Back Guarantee

I had problems with the software and support but eventually I was connected with Accu-Scope rep and he gave me instructions as to how to save what I saw to disk.  My first picture that I observed and saved is of my own blood.   Red blood cells magnified at 400X.