The most important tool a document examiner has is his or her own vision, but in this section we will consider the external tools which enable the examiner to see, evaluate and record more than is apparent to the unaided eye.
Document examiners use a wide range of magnifying equipment.
To see details more closely, there are many types of microscopes. A binocular, or stereo, microscope is comfortable to use because, as the name implies, there are 2 eyepieces and the viewer focuses with both eyes. It might seem that the more powerful the microscope in terms of magnification, the better, but for the task of handwriting examination, this is not the case. When magnification is higher, the field of vision is so narrow that the object viewed loses relevance. In the example below, my signature is shown at 10x, 15x, 20x and 25x.