MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Excellent work and images! Very inspirational.

Welcome Gregers, I am also from Stockholm. Plenty of knowledge on this site to sort out most of the issues you will face in this fascinating hobby. As mentioned, collecting Diatoms in Mälaren is fantastic and I normally drag a net after the boat when going out with my family on boat trip. Always ple...

One of my favourite species! So elegant in the water. Optimized for gliding through the water!

I totally agree with Robert here. I have also tested many microscope cameras, but I produce better images with DSLRs. One of the biggest issues I have had over the years with dedicated microscope cameras is that they require proprietary software which often is buggy and slow. Commercial software and...

Welcome Enrico! I am from Stockholm. Glad to see a fellow microscopist from Sweden here!

I have the Olympus EP50 camera on my CX23. Works very well, but you could also just mount a DSLR camera and get excellent results. If you mount a DSLR, you need a series of tubes and adapters depending on your camera sensor size. If you decided to go for the DSLR route, I can give further advice on ...

Very sharp and beautiful!

Very useful and Fantastic work! Well Done!

Great work!

Hi Håkan, great images, a lot of effort well spent! And thank you for pointing out the crucial points of the method. Everybody knows that peacock feathers are beautiful, but not that they are this beautiful. Bob +1 from me ... and one more from my wife !! MichaelG. Great! I am glad she liked them!

Thanks all!

DonSchaeffer wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 22, 2020 3:37 pm

Beautiful! Did you use polaroid?

No, I used regular light using 4 external lamps with diffusers. No pol-filters were used.

/Håkan

Posting some details from a Peacock feather I had in a drawer for a couple of years, waiting to be photographed. It turned out to be very difficult to photograph these feathers. Reflections were very difficult to eliminate which made focus stacking impossible as white spots do not have sufficient co...

Wow, amazing video of the amoeba eating the egg. Great work!

This was a very interesting read! Thank you for posting. Amazing how much drama these discoveries caused at the time. I love how he in 1703 described Paramecium with it's "little feet" and and "are perpetually beating about like a Spaniel in a Field". "Those Animalculi marked F. are also plentiful i...

Thanks all! It is truly an interesting species but difficult to culture. I have them in a petri dish, but they are not growing at the moment. Also have a batch in culture growth media with very limited growth. Trying to make a few more strands to photograph. Will try using an oil objective. These ve...

Great effect! Almost DIC-like!

This photograph shows a beautiful (and relatively large) terrestrial cyanobacteria often found growing on rocks. Stigonema Mammilosum is a short branching species that can be found as blackish crusts and biofilms on inselbergs (isolated rock hill, knob or ridge) in many places on earth. Alexander vo...

I can send close-up pictures of all sides of it, but perhaps not the inside. I don't want to take it apart.

What is the scale of each of the "vases" in Dinobryon. The vase shaped sections in the samples I collected are about 20 microns in length. I observed no internal structures, except what I observed below. In pictures, # 4, #5' where a vase structure contains large inclusions, they appear to be singl...

Always nice when the ponds starts to come back to life! The vase shaped organism is likely a golden algae called Dinobryon.





Golden Algae - Dinobryon by Håkan Kvarnström, on Flickr

Beautiful!

Thoughtful and profound microscopy observations with your B/W image captures spark my my reaction, thank you hkv. It has always given me pause at how with 'blasts of transmitted illumination'...a sample wet mount slide prep is oh so unnaturally visualized. I toyed with 'night vision' device to see ...

Quite interesting: Botryococcus has a lot of potential as a source for renewable energy as it produces a lot of hydrocarbons: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botryococcus_braunii You have made this visible in a beautiful way, Håkan! Bob Yes, the algae have been used for biofuel production. I wrote th...

hb2sbdb wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 06, 2020 12:05 am

amazing! very arfull images. I could make poster out from any of them and hang in my living room (well, maybe except the nematode one

Ha ha, yes teh nematode may scare a few people.

MicroBob wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 04, 2020 5:25 pm

Isn't it the Botryococus that has oil drops at it's edges?

Yes, yes, I wrote the wrong name. Sorry!

Thanks all! Great to get feedback and I agree about the geometric shapes. MicroBob, I also like those two, but also Gloeotricha with the oil-drops around the edge.

Yes, unfortunately, DIC is not cheap. For some reason the prices refuse to drop on ebay. Used Olympus (BX) equipment are almost more expensive nowadays than they were 3-4 years ago.

/Håkan

I currently have phase, fluorescent, and dark-field capability but was wondering if anyone familiar with the BX series can tell me what I will need to take advantage of DIC on my particular setup. You need DIC prisms in the condenser. The condensers that take prisms are U-UCD8 and U-UCDB. DIC can b...

Hi folks, I have been experimenting with black and white micrographs for a change. I think it gives a different feeling and interesting contrast. Been trying BF, DF, DIC, POL and FLUO to see the difference. The First image is a colonial cyanobacteria (Gloeotrichia) in brightfield. The second image i...

viktor j nilsson wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 05, 2019 8:14 pm

Hej Håkan,
I've admired your work for quite some time. Good to see you post on here as well! Amazing and inspiring photos as always.

Viktor, in Lund

Thanks Viktor! Good to see a Swedish microscope fellow on here. Not many in Sweden that I am aware of with this hobby.