With TIRF, epi and, light sheet illumination for single molecule quantitative imaging with high (ms) temporal resolution, should I go for best available laser quality, or a simple good one can perfectly work for me?
i know the concept of buying something expensive “just in case” is frustrating … but it’s nearly impossible for someone else to answer this for you. It depends on so many factors, including your appetite for risk, sensitivity to downtime, ability to notice and fix problems that might be arising with your laser, precision demands and magnitude of change in your experiments (i.e. if you’re looking at massive intensity changes, then you may still have sufficient precision even with a fluctuating laser). Additionally, even if you could put a precise number on the laser metrics required for your experiment, the matching performance metrics may or may not be measured and reported for all of the lasers you’re considering.
“Single molecule quantitative imaging” demands (at least in theory) pretty good equipment, particularly the quantitative part… so you’re certainly in a situation where high quality stable equipment would be nice, but that’s a budgetary decision only you can really make.