Critical illumination

Critical illumination or Nelsonian illumination is a method of specimen illumination used for transmitted and reflected light (trans- and epi-illuminated) optical microscopy. Critical illumination focuses an image of a light source on to the specimen for bright illumination. Critical illumination generally has problems with evenness of illumination as an image of the illumination source (for example a halogen lamp filament) is visible in the resulting image. Köhler illumination has largely replaced critical illumination in modern scientific light microscopy although it requires additional optics which less expensive and simpler light microscopes may not have.