Bugs, Grass and Diatoms

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Bryan
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Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2018 11:31 pm

Bugs, Grass and Diatoms

#1 Post by Bryan » Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:40 pm

These photos are from some antique microscope slides I recently purchased off the evil auction site. As I have mentioned before I like to shoot on film so this was an exercise in improving my photography skills with that medium. Since focus stacking would be quite difficult with film I was trying to improve the depth of field by closing the iris as much as possible and making long exposures. This works good at lower magnifications but is probably not going to work at higher magnifications without very flat subjects.

My setup is a Leitz SM microscope with a MIKAS camera adapter. The camera adapter is for M39 mount cameras so I have a few adapters to adapt that to different cameras. I have found that getting critical focus using a M39 rangefinder camera is quite difficult. For the photos below I used a Minolta srT201 SLR camera loaded with 100ISO black and white film. To time the long exposures I attached the microscope light to a darkroom timer. With the shutter set on B on the camera I used a cable release that holds the shutter open until I release it. After focusing I closed down the iris as much as possible, switched the light to the timer, opened the shutter then started the exposure with the darkroom timer. I made sure the room was dark to avoid unwanted light reflecting off the slide.

For this first one the depth of field worked out pretty good. This is the foot or claw of an Earwig (Forficula Auricularia) from an antique microscope slide made by W. Watson & Sons, Ltd. 3.5X objective, 10X eyepiece, cropped image.
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Much of the hairs on this one went out the depth of field. This is a Bedbug foot or claw from and antique microscope slide made by John Barnett. 3.5X objective, 10X eyepiece, cropped image.
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Arachnoidiscus Ehrenbergii Diatoms from Port Townsend, WA. These are from a microscope slide made by R. I. Firth dated August 1968. 10X objective, 10X eyepiece.
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The outer edges of this one are out of focus, maybe caused by the Leitz Perplan 10X eyepiece. Marram Grass cross section from an antique microscope slide made by F. F. H. Boxall. 3.5X objective, 10X eyepiece.
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46844582664_099214bf4d_z.jpg (143.55 KiB) Viewed 2954 times

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