Desmids continued...

[hkv]

Another set of desmids.

[KurtM]

Desmids are at once among the most beautiful of things to examine through microscopes, and the most difficult to get really good images of. For my money, you just can't beat DIC for these things, and they also benefit greatly from stacking since they're normally pretty thick for their length and/or breadth. I don't think too many people will ever get tired of seeing Desmid images!

In case you take requests, I'd like to see a picture of the microscope used to get these images.

[rnabholz]

A very nice series of a great subject.

The second one intriques me. I have never seen that texture on one of these. Do you think it was somehow diminished, perhaps expired and decaying? Did you see any movement in the crystals?

Interesting images very well done.

Rod

[zzffnn]

Nice photos. I would like to ask exactly what Rod asked, about the second photo. Thanks.

[hkv]

Thanks Rod, Kurt and zzffnn. I did not notice any particular movement in the Desmid. It looks like it has a "ribbed design". This was the only one I found having these features. Although no movements inside, they did move around quite a bit, perhaps due to water flow under the cover glass. I ruined quite a few stacks due to unwanted movement in the middle of a stacking serie.

I will post pictures of the microscope and setup in a while.

[gekko]

Really beautiful desmids and you did them justice in your imaging. I too have never seen one like #2 (neither in real life nor as an image). Fascinating.

[75RR]

Nice images! Agree, one can never see too many desmids. Image two is intriguing.

[Crater Eddie]

Great images! If you look closely, #1 shows similar "ribbing" to that so evident in #2, it is just masked by the contents. I too thought #2 was probably deceased, but maybe its just the position and the way it caught the light? These fellows usually have a clear bit at each end with a few particles that dance about due to Brownian motion, quite fascinating to watch.
CE

[hkv]

Found another one on a dried out slide. I lifted the cover glass and used water based mountant from Magnacol and shot a new stack. Seems that most are ribbed. This time 20x, DIC, 16 stack.



Cropped to show more details:

[c-krebs]

Really nice look at the surface texture in that second specimen. Beautiful.

[gekko]

Very nice, and beautiful detail in the cropped image.