MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Hello, my name is Mark Osterman and I’m the photographic process historian at George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. I just joined this group this evening. My experience in typical microscopy is limited and I’m coming into this from the side door. My work is related to making micro-photographs with the wet collodion method as introduced by J. B. Dancer in 1851.

The museum has a very nice collection of mid 19th century micro-photograph specimens and three cameras made by Dagron for photographing multiple images on a single plate as used to make stanhope images. I am very attracted to the mounted slides of this era and am very interested in making some of the paper wrapped style. So, I’m interested in communication with others who might be doing these mountings as well.

I will be teaching our first micro-photography workshop at the Museum in the first week of December. It looks like we’ll have fun. This year I taught 23 workshops in everything from daguerreotype to making 35 mm silver gelatin bromide film. It’s an interesting way to make a living. For more information about what I do simply google my name and the word photography.

Welcome. Sounds like a fun job.

Welcome Mark, I’ll be interested to learn what you find out about micro-photographs. I’m a film shooter that recently started doing photo-microscopy. I first mounted a 35mm camera to my Leitz SM microscope and have since graduated to a medium format camera and a 4x5 camera. I’m making contact prints from the 4x5 negatives, so far they’re looking pretty good. I also recently made a few attempts at mounting frames from Kodachrome 8mm movie film onto slides. They worked pretty good but I need to get better at it. I would love to get to the George Eastman Museum someday, your workshops sound interesting.

Finally, we meet the reason we have to say "photomicrography"!
That is a really interesting specialty, and I'm looking forward to learning more.

Welcome, Mark

It’s too far for me to get to [your] Rochester
... but if you have any good material available online, please let us know.
Manchester [England] ‘Science and Industry Museum’ holds a good JBD collection; but sadly it is not curated to the previous high standard.
https://blog.scienceandindustrymuseum.o ... jb-dancer/

MichaelG.

Hi Mark, and welcome

This may be of interest to those unfamiliar with JBD
http://www.manchestermicroscopical.org.uk/danchom.html

MichaelG.

Hey Brian,

So you are making images from the specimens on the stage of your microscope? And 4x5 no less. Yes, that is photo micrography. It’s for scientific and teaching purposes. What I am doing is the opposite. I am taking pictures with the microscope as the camera to produce micro photographs directly on the microscope slide covered with photo sensitive silver iodide. Has absolutely no use but the novelty of the thing. Except for microcircuitry .. microfilm.

Hey Michael,

I would love to see that collection. Been a few years since we’ve been there. My wife and I have given many workshops in the UK including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Lacock Abbey and Leamington Spa at Kenilworth Castle. We also did the wet collodion stereo photography for Brian May’s stereo photography research.

Mark Osterman wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 19, 2019 10:10 pm

Hey Brian,

So you are making images from the specimens on the stage of your microscope? And 4x5 no less. Yes, that is photo micrography. It’s for scientific and teaching purposes. What I am doing is the opposite. I am taking pictures with the microscope as the camera to produce micro photographs directly on the microscope slide covered with photo sensitive silver iodide. Has absolutely no use but the novelty of the thing. Except for microcircuitry .. microfilm.

Yes, I'm making images of specimens on the stage. So you're using the microscope like an enlarger and projecting the image through to film on the stage? I guess that would be the opposite of an enlarger in a way.

Not really an enlarger ... as a camera taking a picture of a negative ... so smaller.

Here are some pictures

Mark,

That's an amazing looking process, did anyone make a video of the instruction? Film photographer as well, and I've always found traditional processes interesting.

does this method works for capturing 35mm negatives or slides, is 35 mm too big for scope i think this method would be awesome to try out.