MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

hkv wrote:Agree on the bug definition. A bug is anything small with moving legs or wings, hence highly likely to attack you. All you want to do is to smack it with a shoe. That's a bug

Well YEAH!!!

Thank you for that.

Now that's the kind of video I want to be able to shoot!

jimur wrote:

Lilly Begonia wrote:

einman wrote:And thus the addiction begins......

Addiction is such a hard word, I prefer to call it an interest.

Sort of like, "a bug by any other name........" ?

I see what you did there.

Yes, thank you John, but at this point in my experience all that is quite beyond me, so I will have to plug on at my own pace and refer back to it.

Haha! All of us here to a man/woman would happily drive that car if we had a beauty of a 'scope at home waiting for us! :D :D You know, considering your love of video I hate to say it but I'd suggest a DSLR (Canon 1XXXD in the UK) and the superb EOS utility2 free from Canon - my video-capture with ...

I think you're right - and I have on several occasions and with different subjects compared the end-result (i.e. the stacked image output) of ToupView (which has 3 stacking options - 'max contrast', 'weighted average' and 'ffdssd') to that of Zerene and CombineZP 'free' versions and have found no d...

Hi, I second Jim's very good advice re a trinocular - the facility of a photo-tube is worth it's weight in gold in my experience. The ability to have a camera permanently mounted atop the tube is sheer heaven believe me! You then begin to find taking images (and yes I would also opt for a 'Windows ...

Lilly, don't pounce yet. Amscope and Omax are very similar. See this site for a comparison of two models: http://microscopegenius.com/battle-of-the-microscopes-amscope-omax-compound-microscope-comparison-b120b-cs-m82es/ Both are good for the price and for a newby I do not suggest buying a used scop...

My first microscope is an OMAX M82ES, and I find I am not entirely satisfied with it due to focusing issues. So I started looking at offerings by AMSCOPE. They seem to have some impressive equipement, but I find much of it out of stock. That tells me there is a real demand for it. So now I'm thinkin...

I found this on Amazon while looking for a mounting needle, and it gets good reviews, but in what circumstances is it used? https://www.amazon.com/Hoyers-Microscope-Slide-Mounting-Medium/dp/B075FD54ZJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519682636&sr=8-1&keywords=slide+mounting+needle#customerReviews Seems peopl...

Crater Eddie wrote:https://www.amazon.com/DISSECTING-DISSE ... ing+needle

What I use
CE

Ah! Thank you so much Eddie! I love buy with one click! I'd only heard it called a mounting needle, dissecting needle worked.

I see videos of slides being prepared with a mounting needle and it seems to do the job nicely, lowering the cover slip in a way that avoids bubbles, but I just can't seem to find one. Amazon shows me pictures of carburetors when I search there. It's a simple thing, but I've learned over years that ...

einman wrote:And thus the addiction begins......

Addiction is such a hard word, I prefer to call it an interest.

yes technically a water mite in not an insect. I will say you are like someone that has just discovered religion!! Fun isn't it? There are several old books you can purchase that can aid in your identifying these creatures. Well yes einman, it is fun, and I'm pretty much hooked. I spend so much tim...

Well it's official, it's not the software, it's the scope itself. I was looking at a rotifer just now, and the focus issue happened again, so I looked through the eyepiece, and it was happening there too. I wrote Elizabeth at MicroscopeNet.com and told her of the problem asking what might be done a...

I count 8 legs in your photo. Based on my past observations it is a water mite. they are quite common. I have a video of one I made in the past as well. Although they come in various sizes. A true Bug is in the order Hemiptera although most people call all insects "bugs". 8MVah-M2DuM Thank you sir....

Ho Lilly, This looks like a mite to me, i can count seven legs in yourm photo ( mites have eight legs). What do you mean by "bug"?; to an entomologist a bug is an insect with piercing sucking mouthparts, there many insects (and other invertebrates which are not bugs). Peter. A bug is a bug. I'm not...

I was scanning through a slide looking for water bears, and seeing nothing but endless clopada, nematodes, rotifers, and tiny swarming bacteria, when I came upon this: https://s26.postimg.org/murfqzbbd/bug_on_it_s_back.jpg Okay, that looks to me like a BUG . Not a micro-organism such as I've been se...

Well it's official, it's not the software, it's the scope itself. I was looking at a rotifer just now, and the focus issue happened again, so I looked through the eyepiece, and it was happening there too. I wrote Elizabeth at MicroscopeNet.com and told her of the problem asking what might be done ab...

I found this some time ago, and only realized what it could be today. It's a spherical organism with what looks like suction cups all over it, and while reading up on rotifera today I found mention of colonial rotifers and a picture that looked similar. https://s26.postimg.org/xg24bbv3t/colonial_rot...

I've been scouring the web for this one, and cannot find anything quite like it. Nothing I've seen has that barrel like mid-section. It gets around with the push-off kind of locomotion and inches along. I believe it to be a variety of Bdelloid rotifer, but of course I could be wrong. https://s26.pos...

I came upon this little fellow on the first slide of the day, he's very small and was energetically wiggling about. I took video of him, but it was so heavily pixelated it was not worth watching, so I took several stills of him. I'm guessing he's a newly hatched tardigrade. Most of them I find are t...

Ah! So a primitive sort of eye-spot! That's What I originally thought. Could be. :D A handful of related "nassulid" ciliates (all of whom live by eating blue-green algae) have similar spots, and responsiveness to light has been shown in at least one of them. Oh, that's so very cool! I have to find ...

What is it? Does it have some function? What might that be? I don't know if the function of the pigment spot in Nassulopsis is known, with certainty (I'll have a quick look at the literature, and see if anyone has investigated it). In some ciliates (such as Nassula citrea and some species of Chlamy...

Incidentally, that "eyespot" you're seeing is a bit of food, in the posterior of the organism. The mouth is at the other end, at the base of that long flexible "proboscis." :) Looking more closely at your pics, I can see the faint outline of the macronucleus, which looks like a string of beads. So,...

Bruce Taylor wrote:A rotifer egg, possibly.

Could be, but I'm too new to this to even guess that. I see you are not. I've bookmarked your blog

... in the past there has been quite serious lag while panning slides with ToupLite. My guess is that both problems are mainly attributable to the USB_3 vs USB_2 speed issue that we have already discussed. ToupLite may be making things worse though ... It does seem very much 'the poor relation' A t...

It's a ciliate called Nassulopsis (note the pigmented spot at one end of cell). As it digests its food (cyanobacteria) all sorts of interesting colours appear. :) Ah!!!! Thank you, and yes I did notice that pigmented spot at the end of it. What is it? Does it have some function? What might that be?...

Your thrilling us with a variety of our wee neighbors, thanks Lilly. This protest is certainly an 'image capture keeper'! So I suggest you start your observational hunts with a two slide procedure. Try placing an initial 'long drawn out droplet' on a slide...observe this slide with no coverslip..yo...

Stacked from 4 images:



... here's another one stacked with 6 images. I'm really liking this stacking thing.