MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

For anyone intersted in DIC (differential inerference microsopy I posted a new article on my web site that compare DIC with, phase, flourescence, Rheiberg etc and describe how DIC works etc.

Below are a couple of photos from the article.
https://www.canadiannaturephotographer. ... scopy.html

Hi there
Fascinating coverage of a difficult complex procedure.
Love your images.

Haven't read the article yet (it's on my list!) but wonderful work on the images - spectacular.
Tom W.

Ha Rob,

Thanks for the clear explanation, finally got what DIC does.

Must say Your pictures always make me think.. practice , practice, practice some more, PRACTICE,
thanks for setting the example.

deBult

Thanks - a really nice article and beautiful images. For many of the techniques that you describe you include DIY options that the amateur microscopists can use on inexpensive equipment. This is also possible for fluorescence detection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1tG2wj_TAU

HI Crb5 - you make a good point about fluorescence. I have a UV light I use for my stereoscope. I watched your video which is very nice and will be sue to link to it in a future article. In research we often used a Blue-Green filter or BG12 with a tungsten light source to view neurons injected with fluorescent dyes into giant neurons from snails. Using electrical pulses we injected the dye and viewed them first with a stereoscope which requires no barrier filters and then viewed the samples by light microscopy using a normal fluorescent microscope. It's cheap and it works. Oblique light is also cheap and sometimes it works really well.

There are many great home made instructions and I try to read them. One research paper I found from 1950's showed how to make optical diffraction patterns by photographing a crystal-like subject with a film camera and then cutting the black and white negative, taping it to the back of microscope objective and it produced diffraction patterns similar to a laser. My point is I see many amateur modifications to microscopes that produce spectacular results. Teachers sometime share these in papers and lessons which is great. Thanks for your video, its great when people share information, techniques etc.
Thanks for your comments
RB

Thanks Rob for your comments. I got into fluorescence microscopy 30 years ago as a biochemist looking at single fluorescently-labelled molecules. I had a top of the range Ziess axiovert but the filters weren't good enough so had to invest in $1,000 blocking filters plus lasers, emCCD cameras etc (grant money I should add!). Now I am retired, I bought economy Amscope and Swift microscopes and added DIY modifications to look at plankton https://sites.google.com/ucsc.edu/cbags ... authuser=0 which led to my interest in detecting microplastics in our seawater samples https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00518. Only discovered oblique illumination 1 year ago!

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing!

Brilliant article