MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

I'm sure you are getting good at IDing amoebas. You seem dedicated and patient.

On the camera - can't decide. New or used. Full frame or APS-C. People here are delusional about pricing on their used cameras, at least on craigslist, but the right deal will come.

Possibly Korotnevella genus but there's no information on the long 'fishing pole.' It doesn't seem like a pseudopodia, based on the visible internal retracting structure. Maybe it's uncharacterized - a new or undescribed species? The SEMs on that site of the Korotnovella species are amazing. There's...

Hello and welcome. In my limited experience - working for a pharmaceutical company for 5+ years - I never even saw a microscope while working with soil cultures. In retrospect, that seems a bit surprising. In grad school, we used them very rarely and just to check on a culture. But that said, there ...

Thanks, Wes. Much appreciated.

Thanks for the great amoeba links, Wes.

Do you use Live View to control vibration issues? The SL2 has Live View but I'm not seeing anything for electronic front curtain shutter in the manual. Some posts suggests the SL2 has it but I'll check the photog sites as you suggest.

Now that's a very nice image, as compared with my amoeba. Taken with the Canon 50D?

Here's a raw/uncropped image that better shows the internal structure. To me it looks like it makes a large loop inside the organism.

Thanks Wes. Still, there's much more room for improvement over my hand wavering above the 23mm eyepiece. The phase contrast is exciting tho. I like the method a lot. That black tube was being slowly extended and retracted out from the amoeba and it happened multiple times. Internal structure of it w...

Still using my cell phone so not worthy of posting in the Pics/Video section, but here is a really interesting amoeba discovered today while playing with phase contrast. The long black tube was completely retracted at times. Sample is from a fresh water pond. Possibly looks like Dinamoeba (guessing ...

Thank you for posting this link 75RR. It looks excellent - I've been amazed at the level of detail some of these older ID texts offer.

Thanks for sharing, apochronaut. The DNA analysis should be really interesting. It's mysterious how tenacious life is - that any possible niche that can be exploited will be exploited, even at great extremes. Maybe finding life on a place like Titan (perhaps under the surface where it's presumably w...

Hopefully you can share some images and techniques if you get some good results with the oblique patches.

I only had intermittent and fleeting luck with my Chinese scope with the oblique patches. But maybe the Optiphot will perform better since it already gives better dark field.

Thanks for sharing this - very interesting. I wonder if microbial diversity is higher in these mountains as well, and perhaps provides at least part of the foundation for the more diverse macro-sized species. Or maybe there are just higher concentrations of microbes assisting in nutrient cycling, sy...

You weren't kidding microb. That's a serious maze of prisms.

wstenberg, hopefully you'll keep us updated on all of the cool things this scope has to offer, and post some images of pond life from the many optics pathways available.

That's a lot of rotifers and an interesting technique, yielding a very nice image. I'll have to research the lambda plate.

Thanks 75RR - I saw this link, but didn't have the materials on hand to make something similar. Instead I used an old post from this forum on a DIY centering scope that used two eye pieces and a homemade tube. It didn't work, in part due to impatience. As it turns out, with the eyepiece out and no p...

Thank you for your interested farnsy and BillT, First image - I removed the 2x lens from the bottom of the unit. Possibly you could leave it in. Second image - From a previous failed attempt at making a telescope, I had fabricated a disc with a 3mm hole in the middle and glued it onto a Nikon CFW ey...

I bought one of these on eBay, wondering if it could be used for a photo eyepiece (thinking not really because the lens is at the bottom) but discovered that by removing the lens (unscrews) and adding a black disc with a 3 mm hole to the top (drop it down inside from the top), you get a phase center...

More excellent DIC images and it's always educational to see the behaviors of these microbes. To me the behaviors are more interesting than the identification most of the time and it's fascinating to see how microecology seems reflective of macroecology. Or vice versa, more accurately, since the mic...

Sounds like we took a similar path. I started out with the plastic polarizing film but felt it slightly distorted the image so found the same (or something similar - can't recall) glass filter on eBay. Since my scope has a slot for a polarizer, I simply unscrewed the glass from the metal housing and...

Once again, thank you PeteM for your expertise. I would not have guessed that was the reason.

Thank you for posting pics of the Zeiss, Wes. Looks like an excellent set up and also helps me better understand how the different DIC set ups work.

Perhaps instead of dunking the slide, you could get a squirt bottle that has a good water stream so the microbes could be jetted back into the tank with minimal oil contamination. Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Economy-Bottle-Squeeze-Medical-Tattoo/dp/B00WTHLR18/ref=asc_df_B00WTHLR18/?t...

The original nosepiece on the phase contrast Optiphot has optics in it in addition to having a spring loaded body part. I bought a second Optiphot for parts and that nosepiece is skinnier with no glass (image 1 below). The ones listed on eBay are typically like the latter - no glass. They look diffe...

Yes, the DIC prism was worth it. Very nice. It's interesting that the flagellum broke up so quickly.

Did you post images or details of your set up? Maybe I missed it - always interested in DIC knowledge.

Thanks all for the clarifications. By a stroke of luck, I found some in a pond sample yesterday after seeing this post. I had seen them once before but thought they were some kind of misshapen flatworm because of the way they move. Their macronuclei show up nicely in bright field when you can get th...

That's an interesting microbe. It appears as if you can just see the 2 macro-nuclei in the center, and perhaps just maybe that small central dot is the micronucleus? So many questions...Do these guys move much? What type of motility pattern do they make in the water? What is the function/purpose of ...

Hi Beerbatter,

Welcome and I hope all goes well with Dorian. Amscope has 20% off sales at least a few times a year as well, so with a little patience, you may be able to get that scope at an even better price. They recently had a 10% off sale, now it's 15%. Maybe next one is 20% ?

Heather

Maybe I got lucky BillT. So far there is nothing wrong with the scope except for a scratched eye piece. The phase condenser knob was stuck from old lube but that was an easy fix. Lenses needed light cleaning. And the condenser carrier gears need lube and perhaps a little freeing up of the slide mech...

Thank you, apochronaut. Good to know.