Advice on microscope...

I've been thinking about investing in a microscope to up my game with trying to cultivate and engender a survival of the fittest in harvested yeast. I was looking at this microscope on eBay...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/40X-2500X-L...860?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ec3c344c4

The price on that seems too good to be true. What do you, oh learned professors of Zymology, think of that scope? Could I get anything accomplished from staining slides with this thing or is it too low resolution?

Picture looks like WIN!

OK, marketing aside, It'll probably be fine. All you need to count cells is 400x. The optics on that scope are probably not going to be as good as a true biology scope, but it will work.

Looks like there's an X/Y stage there. That's really important when you want to move around the object.

I see a 40x objective, and a 100x oil objective. Wish I had the latter on mine.

The Abbe condensor is standard, but I don't know about the LED illumination.

I'd say buy for sure.

These guys (AmScope) make a bunch of different low-grade microscopes with various options. You can buy this one on amazon as well for roughly the same price (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009VUPIKM/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20), and there other models out there for less money if you don't want the camera . At this price the optics will definitely be sub-par (especially at higher magnifications), but for cell counting you just need to see fuzzy blobs.

This thread (and resulting blog post) discussed some similar scopes:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/help-selecting-hemocytometer-microscope-367923/
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/11/amscope-binocular-compound-microscope.html

I think it has all you need. I bought my monocular microscope for $160, so the price seems to be ok. The camera will be nice for offline yeast counting with ImageJ.

Kai