Rotifers from the summer of 2020

[RobBerdan]

I love photographing rotifers as they are just the right size for light microscopy, not too small and not too big. There are 2149 species so unlike ciliates their identification is a bit easier. Some rotifers can move quickly my solution is to compress them slightly by drawing water with piece of paper towel from under the coverslip until they are immobile.

I posted an article with images I took during this summer, along with some new information and references to keys and recent research. One group discovered one rotifer produces a chemical that can paralyze worms that cause schistosomiasis, a dangerous infection that affects 200 million people world wide. Below are a few images from my article.
https://www.canadiannaturephotographer. ... sited.html

[janvangastel]

What a beautifull photographs!! And thank you for the link to your article.

[75RR]

Very nice! Particularly like the first one

[DonSchaeffer]

Incredible pictures. What kind of hardware do you have?

[Sabatini]

Outstanding work.
Thanks.

[RobBerdan]

Hi Don - in my article about cameras for photomicrography I show some of my microscopes - some new and some old. https://www.canadiannaturephotographer. ... DSLRs.html

I have been taking pictures with microscopes for a long time (50 years), but only in the past few years have I really taken it up seriously again. I am trying to sell some images to offset my costs. I am still learning lots and testing different microscopes and cameras. It helps that after I did 15 years of research I spent a fair bit of time as a nature photographer and still enjoy getting out in the field to photograph wildlife. I had lots of equipment to play with when I was doing research, but very little time due to the demand to publish, teach and write grants - I lived in the lab 7 days a week.

I am attaching a picture of my darkroom converted to a microscopy lab in my home, and I have a few more microscopes in other rooms. I am trying to sell some of my older scopes that I refurbish in order to buy and pay for new equipment. As with cameras it's more about the experience of the person using the equipment then the actual equipment. Some of my best photos were taken with a 50 year old Olympus E microscope which I still have and use - shown on the right side of the picture. I bought this microscope when I graduated from grade 8 with the help of my parents. See my article: https://www.canadiannaturephotographer. ... DSLRs.html for more background on my first cameras, etc.

I am working on my next article which will compare Oblique lighting with DIC microscopy, - see top photo. Oblique lighting is essentially "free "and some of the images are comparable to DIC microscopy. I hope others will find the article of interest - I want to show several methods to obtain Oblique lighting so others will see it can be an economical alternative to DIC - that said DIC is fantastic, but very expensive. I have been looking for ways DIC might be simulated with software (one researcher who won't answer my emails shows and claims to have done this see attached PDF) . I hope over the next 20 years or so I can spend more time promoting microscopy and photomicrography to anyone interested.

Cheers
RB