The grease from your fingers will damage the quartz envelope. When you change lamps you need to hold the lamp with the packaging material provided or with a clean tissue. Be careful inserting the pins on the lamp into the socket, they can bend and break. It is a good idea to rub the pins with emory paper before inserting them as they frequently have corrosion on the pins. Quartz-halogen lamps produce a continuous spectrum of illumination.
Most people find that quartz-halogen light looks whiter than other incandescent light.
This is because quartz-halogen light is richer in the blue spectrum. When dimmed quartz-halogen lamps get redder just like any other lamp. Power supplies for quartz-halogen lamps are built usually built into the base of the microscope. Modern power supplies can vary the voltage continuously across a wide range. Some research microscopes have a fixed voltage power supply and vary the intensity by using neutral density filters.