MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Each of the following specimens were taken from the first 12"/30 cm of water that was, on average, 6'/2 m deep, in my plankton net. I've seen Pleurosigma and Nitzschia in plenty of benthic samples, and find it interesting that they're also common in the community of drifters. The diatom Odontella, a...

Hi Kurt. Those are some really nice photos! I would be very interested to know how your flash is set up... Hi Tim, and thanks! I use a simple arrangement of beamsplitter and speedlite, see pic below. It must be noted that recording living critters - or at least fast-moving living critters - isn't h...

Milou, I live in the USA, and was advised to try 'glyptal' by an internet friend who lives in England. I couldn't find 'glyptal', but somehow discovered that the product I show in my picture is the formulation I wanted. So now it's up to you to discover what brand name glyptal goes by wherever you a...

Thanks for the kind words, Leonard! I tried just about everything in my quest for the perfect ringing cement for use on diatom slides with Pleurax as the mountant, and ended up liking Testor's model enamel better than anything else, glyptal running a close second. As Leonard says, glyptal is a prett...

I found this guy in one of my plankton net hauls from Galveston Bay. Looks like a Stentor to me, but I was unaware that Stentors are found in saltwater. But then most aquatic protists do have marine counterparts, so perhaps so. It certainly looks like Stentor to me, what do you think? tlansing: Here...

Thanks for the kind words. No flash used on these images, as I didn't have time to set it up without losing the shots - I'm far from well-practiced when it comes to shooting living critters that move fast, much more accustomed to slow moving diatoms! There will be some flash shots coming up soon, th...

An interest in marine plankton has taken hold of me this winter, as well as it probably should since I live so close to the Galveston Bay complex and Gulf of Mexico. While my primary interest in phytoplankton, namely drifting diatoms, is what drew me into this, it's impossible to resist the temptati...

Yep, a very pretty little scene, nicely done!

You can identify most diatoms as diatoms through the 10x. For seeing them "clearly", as zzffnn says 40x and up ... all the way up into the SEM (scanning electron microscope) range. The 10x, 20x, and 40x lenses are fine for the general purposes of watching diatoms scoot around in pondwater samples an...

Dr Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that in one centimeter of your lower colon lives more bacteria than all the humans who ever walked the Earth.

Really??

PS: Cool pic!

That first image is very nice. Have you ever heard of a "Universal Gradient Filter"? A great DIY option, from what I'm seeing here you might have fun experimenting with it...? See:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... sc&start=0

Nicely done! Those things are so wonderfully fascinating to watch, and your Zeiss provides excellent imagery to do it.

Yes, pretty astounding - that's some nice imaging, and a fantastic slide! Wonder if you'd care to say a bit on the making of it?

apochronaut wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 10, 2022 2:26 am

They looked like a miniature volcano school science project made out of glass.

Always enjoyable to take in Apo's views on life!

Scarodactyl wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 06, 2022 3:20 am

It just so happens I got a Wild M8 with a good objective but a misaligned body a while back which I need to clear out...

Drop me an email, let's talk about getting that old hunk of #%@* outta there: ngc704 at aol.com or gmail.com, either works.

Yeah, what Pete said. That's a magnificent looking beast of a stereo scope...

PS: I have a Wild M8 that's complete except for its 1x plan lens, and I have failed to to find one. With the resourcefulness you two regularly exhibit, I cast it out there...

Is there any hope of getting that translated into English? How I would love to be able to read it through...

deBult, besides the internet, I find two books helpful: "Marine Plankton, A Practical Guide" by G.E. Newell & R.C. Newell "A Guide to Coastal Plankton and Marine Invertebrate Larvae" by DeBoyd L. Smith & Kevin B. Johnson Dubious, I find this one to be very high quality and reasonably priced for a pl...

Oh my gosh - now there's a post that made me sit up and start paying attention! Holy smokes, congratulations big time, and may you find some killer auctions on objective lenses now!!

Thanks, everyone! I wish I had remembered to add the astounding fact (to me anyway) that the Rhizosolenia sp., which is actually a chain of three, in image #4 measures a full 1 mm in overall length! When I first saw it I didn't think it could be a diatom at that size, but closer inspection revealed ...

As a microscopy hobbyist who lives near the sea, I've owned a plankton net for a good while, but really haven't used it as much as I ought to. Lately I've become more enthusiastic about exploring the "other half" of the diatom (micro) world, meaning diatom varieties that drift with the currents rath...

Francisco, beautiful microscope, thanks for showing it to us! I'm with Pete, I've never seen one before so that makes your post doubly interesting.

I know from my own past experience just how big a thrill it can be when a seller doesn't know what he's got, but I think you have the record there -- that's a truly magnificent photon processing machine you have there! I bet if you just happened to want to take a few additional detail pix of various...

Thanks, y'all!

Microbob, I agree you're probably correct. But one of these days I'll successfully clean a Cylindrotheca fulsiformis, and when I do I'll be able to process anything!

Thank you very much!

PM to Doron: I still have those shells and will get busy on them one of these days, I promise! Do you remember what I'm referring to?

I must have been reasonably well behaved over the past year, as Santa brought me a brand new plankton net. I took it for a test drive by dragging it up and down the dock at a nearby boat ramp to see what's in the cooler winter water. This is 29.5º N latitude, so when I say 'cooler winter water' we'r...

Last March I gathered a diatom sample from the marina/harbor in Rockport, Texas... https://www.google.com/maps/@28.0252034,-97.0484519,201m/data=!3m1!1e3 ...and got a very nice haul. Recently I've been going through the photo archives and came across a few images from that adventure that I never pos...

Thanks for the kind comments, all! Yes, O. mobiliensis looks about right to me too. The images are all stacks, and some post processing has been done, mostly to adjust light levels and local contrast (sharpening) plus other tweaks if I think it helps. The Texas City Dike is a fantastic resource, qui...

I've been sampling at the Texas City Dike lately, a 5 mile long spit of land jutting out into Galveston Bay near its entrance from the Gulf Of Mexico. It's impossible not to be captivated and delighted by the long golden chains of Melosira, and zig-zag Biddulphia diatoms. Then I ran across a new one...

Thank you very much for the information. I checked out your Flickr album, looks like you have lots of fun taking pictures of tiny things!