Advices to improve my pictures

[kojiki23]

Hi everyone,

I've just took my two first pictures (CH2, canon 5D MK, photomicro adapter L, NFK2.5x)




I'm pretty new at this so any comment to improve would be of great value!

Thanks

[DonSchaeffer]

I would put these on a different site. I could not send a reply to your photos. The link is a little unconventional. My advice is to post directly to Microbhunter.

[kojiki23]

Thanks, I've edited my post, is that fine now?

[Chas]

I've just took my two first pictures

Quite a special moment I think it is good to consider what you have got rather than what you havent !
..and they are nice
If there is one thing ; I notice that the large bristles on the back of the fly seem to have a slight "softness" to them .. do check that the objective and your eyepiece are perfectly clean .. shining the light from a mobile phone's LED through an eyepiece can reveal the near-invisible layer of fogging that can develop on the glass. Just rest the eyepiece upside down on the phone's torch and look at the bottom lens (from the side, not looking straight down!) .. you can do this with low power objectives too.
(The fog layer can develop on the internal surface of the eyepiece lenses too, which is maybe a bit surprising).

If you do see a film on the glass surfaces Zeiss lens cleaner is pretty good.

[DonSchaeffer]

Thanks! It works great now.

[kojiki23]

I've just took my two first pictures

Quite a special moment I think it is good to consider what you have got rather than what you havent !
..and they are nice
If there is one thing ; I notice that the large bristles on the back of the fly seem to have a slight "softness" to them .. do check that the objective and your eyepiece are perfectly clean .. shining the light from a mobile phone's LED through an eyepiece can reveal the near-invisible layer of fogging that can develop on the glass. Just rest the eyepiece upside down on the phone's torch and look at the bottom lens (from the side, not looking straight down!) .. you can do this with low power objectives too.
(The fog layer can develop on the internal surface of the eyepiece lenses too, which is maybe a bit surprising).

If you do see a film on the glass surfaces Zeiss lens cleaner is pretty good.

Thanks a lot for the encouragements!
I've checked my optics for dirt and indeed, seems like it's far from perfect. Sadly, reading this forum, cleaning a microscope seems utterly complicated, but I guess this is where all the fun reside

[Scarodactyl]

Great job! I would not mess with cleaning, your photos aren't showing major signs of lowered contrast which is what you'd expect from dirty elements. I'd say your equipment is dialled in well enough--now the fun bit, finding subjects and fine tuning your lighting and editing skills.

[Chas]

Actually, Sacrodactyl is correct

[Wes]

I'd be very happy if these were my first pictures. There is no chromatic aberration, the field is planar, its all good. As for cleaning the microscope read this: https://hcbi.fas.harvard.edu/files/hcbi ... cope_e.pdf

[imkap]

I love both images.

As with all photography I think the most important thing is to find an interesting subject and if it is alive catch the right moment to take the picture. Or for microscopy prepare the specimen nicely, remove the dirt, which is not always easy, especially if you want to keep them alive. And not easy to make them behave the way you want them to.
Lately we made some plankton videos, and the actors were just static, so we have very interesting hard to catch specimen and a boring video. Nothing we could do to wake them. And sometimes they are just in the right mood and you can get beautiful footage...

Technically dirt is worst close to the specimen, on condenser or the glass. As for cleaning the lens you need a good amount of dirt to really notice the difference in contrast. I clean the condenser very often, other parts I still didn't clean after I got my microscope 2 summers ago. (it was well preserved didn't clean when it arrived)

[Chas]

As for cleaning the lens you need a good amount of dirt to really notice the difference in contrast

It might be the English weather or perhaps the English glass but just about every single eyepiece from the black era microscopes I have has needed a good clean. For some reason the few eyepieces that I have from before WWI do not seem to have developed the same sort of 'slime'. The loss in contrast from a slimy eyepiece is whopping, honestly.

It takes very little to clean an eyepiece, I do wonder if the parts needs a good drying after the lens cleaner has been used (as it can run in to the mounting of the eye lens ) but other than that its quite straightforward.

And of course a poor eyepiece degrades the contrast of every objective.

[Sure Squintsalot]

That Canon 5D is a pretty good camera and will capture almost anything you throw at it.

It's useful to judge your images based on what you plan to do with them. It's hard to take lousy images at low magnification for viewing on your phone. On the other hand, a poster-sized print at 300dpi of something magnified at 400x will reveal all of your system's shortcomings in glorious detail. Keep at it though, this is a really good start!