beginner v. expert idealscope

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For purchasing decisions, which is better for someone at my rudimentary level? I am okay looking at the images, but have always just looked at the IS photos and have never used an actual idealscope myself. I plan on purchasing the light box also. Would buying the expert scope maybe make things easier to look at? Or, if I already have a loupe (which I do), does the 10X mag on the expert scope become redundant? Would having the 10X mag make it more difficult to evaluate an idealscope image if it were a heavily included stone? (meaning that the magnified schmutz would interfere with the pic?) Does the magnification make it difficult to see the entire stone at one time? Is the ability to use either scope stone size dependent?

Would purchasing the expert one make it easier to take pics that I could later post for PSers to evaluate? (provided I can figure out how the heck to post those)

Do you think ASET would add anything to idealscope for a RB or do you think that would be overkill?

Can either one determine if there is painting/digging? If I understand correctly, GIA will mention painting/digging on their report, but AGS will not?

Thanks!

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

Date: 12/6/2006 4:00:59 PM
Author:
For purchasing decisions, which is better for someone at my rudimentary level? I am okay looking at the images, but have always just looked at the IS photos and have never used an actual idealscope myself. I plan on purchasing the light box also. Would buying the expert scope maybe make things easier to look at? Or, if I already have a loupe (which I do), does the 10X mag on the expert scope become redundant? Would having the 10X mag make it more difficult to evaluate an idealscope image if it were a heavily included stone? (meaning that the magnified schmutz would interfere with the pic?) Does the magnification make it difficult to see the entire stone at one time? Is the ability to use either scope stone size dependent?

Would purchasing the expert one make it easier to take pics that I could later post for PSers to evaluate? (provided I can figure out how the heck to post those) no - both work very easily with the light source and good batteries - the best results come if you can change your camera setting to the light bulb type lighting - that takes away any yellowness that most cameras show from that type of light.

Do you think ASET would add anything to idealscope for a RB or do you think that would be overkill? at your level ASET is only useful for fancy shapes. When I have a borderline shallow stone I use DiamCalc ASET to find out when the ''paddles'' appear by changing the amount of blue / head shadow - but that is a pretty advanced option

Can either one determine if there is painting/digging? If I understand correctly, GIA will mention painting/digging on their report, but AGS will not? Both GIA (now) and AGS will not give their top grades to if they think a stone has been painted too much - which is actually a very rare and blown out issue anyway. You can learn to spot the difference by the little Vee shapes that get bigger on ideal-scope images at the outer edge at the upper girdle facet junctions.

Thanks!

to see the optical quality dirfference look at the comparison photo down near the bottom of this page
http://ideal-scope.com/newsletters_issue008.asp
So the answer depends on the level of detail you are looking for.
And the new expert scope has a slighty better lens system than the old one shown and used here.

 

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Thanks - expertscope it is!