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Reading the Wikipedia article on Brightfield Microscopy and I notice the point:

'Low apparent optical resolution due to the blur of out of focus material.'

in the Limitations section.

I understand that this may be in relation to the z-axis resolution, but could someone elaborate on the general process of the resolution reduction?

Thank you for your answers and please do not hesitate to ask me about any clarifications.

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    $\begingroup$ The article is not very informative and it's not written well, either. There are a host of different physical effects that reduce resolution in microscopy and they have to be treated separately. I would suggest you find a better article about this technique and, more importantly, find articles about the techniques that actually work for your applications. $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 9:29

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with brigh field illumination all the different planes in z are illuminated (or excited for fluorescence). Out of focus objects will increase the background noise on the object in focus, decreasing the signal to noise ratio. So effectively the maximum resolution of the microscope cannot be attained.

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  • $\begingroup$ @ How do other techniques avoid this? $\endgroup$
    – SDG
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 7:26
  • $\begingroup$ probably the best example is confocal microscopy $\endgroup$
    – scrx2
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 20:14
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The further your object is from your optic's focal plain, the more blurry it gets. There's not much more to that statement as far as I can deduce.

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  • $\begingroup$ This is not related to the situation at hand. $\endgroup$
    – Carl Witthoft
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 14:05

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