It achieves this through the use of two or more lenses in the objective and the eyepiece. Construction of compound microscope It can achieve higher levels of magnification than stereo or other low power microscopes and reduce chromatic aberration. A compound microscope is an instrument that is used to view magnified images of small objects on a glass slide. The thing is,what usually happens with most microscopes is that the higher the magnification, the lower the image resolution. A compound microscope can have a magnification of anywhere from 40x to 1000x, depending on the individual magnification of each objective and ocular lens. A compound microscope works on the principle that when a tiny object to be magnified is placed just beyond the focus of its objective lens, a virtual, inverted and highly magnified image of the object is formed at the least distance of distinct vision from the eye held close to the eye piece.