MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Fascinating! Certainly looks like a rotifer, but I've not seen one with all those spines on the back of the lorica (that does not say much since there are 2200 species of described rotifers, the majority of which I have not seen ;) ) Nice find and pictures. I would think it is not that commonly seen.

My first, second , and third choice for your situation is the same ;) .... Nikon CF objectives. They are excellent and can be found in (very good) Plan Achromat types as well as Plan Apo types (not cheap!). These are finite type, 160mm tube length, and 45mm parfocal (DIN). They do not require chroma...

John, Until you get a "proper" phase telescope try this simple method... works pretty good... Pull one eyepiece out (or use a spare eyepiece) and carefully hold it up, top to top (eye-lens to eye-lens) to the other eyepiece that is still inserted. Look into the back of the eyepiece you are holding a...

John, You made a good camera choice. I too think the Canon looks a bit better, although frankly in this comparison I would not expect to see much difference at all. That is because a 60X objective is not very demanding as far as sensor resolution is concerned. And this is especially so when you magn...

This is really a beautiful shot! Excellent!

(Note: I see Fan and vasselle have responded as I typed my reply... so I'm sorry for any duplication of thoughts. I suppose it doesn't hurt to hear it several different ways) An ideal wet mount will have a very thin layer of water just "deep" enough to avoid crushing your subjects. Now for the ones...

Kurt, I took the last two images you posted and did (in Photoshop) what I suggested just earlier. Here is an animated GIF to show how much cleaner the background can look if you use just a single source image (via retouching in Zerene). I don't even know if the last "single" image you posted would h...

Kurt, One thing you will find in some stacks like these is that the background can get really junky looking because you are picking up new debris from all levels and combining it all in your final image. Try taking the "finished" image back into retouching and select a single source image with the m...

If you are working on a compound microscope (not a stereo scope) with a 10X or higher objective you should be able to turn off (or set to "0") the adjustments for x/y position (alignment) and magnification. Then, any dust spots you have will not become "trails" but will be simple spots as would be t...

Rodney, What microscope do you have? What eyepieces? In particular, do you feel that the eyepiece tubes are substantial enough to hold the weight of the camera without stressing them too much? I`m at page 43 of the 323 page manual ;) ;) Not a bad idea (especially if you have never used a DSLR before...

Tom,
Great! Thanks for posing this. Well thought out and executed.
It is surprising how few similar pieces are available "commercially" (with the exception of some very expensive large ones), I know...I've looked in the past. My mind is now percolating with ideas for my strereo stand.

Once you start to see the effect you have to go with it. Exactly! Relax at that point! I mentioned with the first stereo image I posted (bee hamuli) that I realize it seems this is not doable for some people. I have some other stereos that are pretty cool as well, but I guess I'll stick more to the...

Another method to try... Center your head to the image on the screen (about 25-30" away). Hold your index finger up vertically in front of you toward the screen, and in line with the center line between the stereo pair. Focus on your finger, and gradually move it towards your nose. While you do this...

Here are five "synthetic stereo" (cross-eyed pairs) made using Zerene Stacker. Again, apologies to those who cannot see the stereo effect... I've deliberately selected ones where the 2-D images are still interesting to see, so hopefully you can still enjoy them. The images in this selection images a...

Kurt, Nice. I think you will have a lot of fun "stacking". What a great subject. A couple of thought on stereo from Zerene. You need to play around with the "shift" amounts. Stacks with more images and shallower DOF often yield a more pronounced stereo effect. Fairly often the image pairs will have ...

This is really nice.

The lighting is excellent and you "stopped" the stack at a good point which provides the nice non-distracting background

Looking good!
The second and third are a real treat. You and John make a good combo.

These are excellent! Beautiful work.

It is a beautiful image. I like the light quality, and as gekko said there really is detail in there. Just out of curiously I plopped it into Photoshop and tried a "Smart Sharpen", radius 0.7, to about 250%. It still maintained that smooth soft lighting look but the low-contrast detail really looked...

Tom,

Looks great! Really nice job with the lighting, panning, exposure... all well done.

Rod,

These are really good.
I'm a little surprised at how nice these small diatoms look with 100X phase.

Kort, Not sure I understand your procedure. It should go like this.... 1) Load the image stack 2) in Preferences, check the stereo/rocking box and select the number of images and the shifts desired 3) Go to "Stack" and run stacking using your desired method (Pmax, Dmap or both) The program will then...

I love stereo images too, always great fun to see. Charles, I finally downloaded the Zerene free trial (and so far just love it!), but it doesn't seem to let me make stereo pairs. Wonder if it's unavailable on the trial version? I don't know for sure, but I am fairly certain that it would. Look und...

Something of a follow-up to "bee knee" pictures, here is another specialized and quite interesting physical feature found in bees, wasps and other Hymenoptera. In Hymnoptera both the front and rear wings beat in unison. In flight the front and hind wings of a bee are held together by a row of tiny h...

Thanks to all for the kind remarks (and again for the warm welcome here).

Rodney wrote:Fossil records of insects dating back multiple millions of years old can be looked at and studied.

This reminded me of some other images that might be of interest, I'll "dig" them up.

I believe overheating shortens the lifespan considerably of supposedly semi-immortal LEDs, so have fingers crossed. Is the aluminum post that the LED is attached to a solid piece? You are running it at a bit over 6 watts if you max the potentiometer out to 2100Ma, well under the max rating. Chances...

Nice implementation. I really like the various LUXdrive LED drivers. They have been very reliable and simple to set-up.

Do you think you will have adequate heat sinking and ventilation?

The specialization of insect legs is a great subject for photomicrography. The honeybee's legs are highly specialized. Here you can see the pollen combs which collect pollen from the middle legs and abdomen. The stiff bristles ("pecten" or "rake") at the bottom of the tibia collects the pollen from ...

Here are the result straight out of Helicon Focus. They have three methods... A, B, and C. "C" is a pyramid contrast method and gives a result that looks just like Zerene Pmax, so I did not upload it. "A" and "B" have two settings that can vary the results considerably. Here I used the "default" set...

Johann, I downloaded your source files and had a look. Some thoughts... Try Zerene again, Dmap. Set preferences... shift X on , Shift Y on , brightness on . Be certain that brightness is checked. Don't use any "auto" value for the threshold setting in preferences. When, halfway through the stack, th...