Euglena, Algae, Diatom and Cyano

[hkv]

Hello my friends, thought I would share these recent shots I have been stacking. The diatom is marine and was collected during my vacation in Islamorada, Florida. Out of a full bottle of sea water, this was all I managed to find. At least he was alive, but somewhat a disappointment that I could not find anything else. I have the bottle under a grow light now to see if somethings comes to life. As always, comments, questions and discussions are welcome! /Håkan

Euglena, 40X Uplansapo:


Euglena by Håkan Kvarnström, on Flickr

Diatom - Pleurosigma (I think), 40X Uplansapo:


Diatom - Pleurosigma by Håkan Kvarnström, on Flickr

Unknown ID, strands of Algae, 60X UplanSAPO WI:


Algae - Unknown sp. by Håkan Kvarnström, on Flickr

Cyanobacteria - Could it be Chroococcus?, 60X UplanSAPO WI


Cyanobacteria - Chroococcus by Håkan Kvarnström, on Flickr

[JimT]

Great images! Especially liked the Euglena.

[einman]

As usual beautiful.

[MicroBob]

Thank you for these great images! They are stacked shots? With plankton I would expect movement to be a problem. How do you cope with that?

Bob

[75RR]

Beautiful images - especially like the euglena, but then they are one of my favorites. I think of them as mini Triffids.

Agree on Chroococcus id

[KurtM]

I'm forever in awe, not to mention envy, of the OLY's performance with DIC - just wonderful!

I'm with the others: any comments on how you freeze the action so effectively would be of great interest.

[MicroBob]

Freezing the action is simple with flash. But stacking plankton would need a very stationary object or a very fast camera.
My Nikon 1j5 can take 20 images in 0,33 seconds. It would also be possible to extract the images from a film. But how does hkv do it?
Håkan, show us some of your wizardry!

[hkv]

Freezing the action is simple with flash. But stacking plankton would need a very stationary object or a very fast camera.
My Nikon 1j5 can take 20 images in 0,33 seconds. It would also be possible to extract the images from a film. But how does hkv do it?
Håkan, show us some of your wizardry!

WOW. 20 images in 0.33 seconds? That is 60 per second. Can it do that at full resolution and dynamic range?
My Sony A9 tops out at 20 images/s at full resolution (6000x4000 pixels) and 12-bits dynamic range. Good enough for me. The good part about the Sony A9 is that it allows me to get decent and relatively noise-free images up to ISO 9600. This makes a flash more or less redundant (for most situation) as I can shoot at 1/4000 and still get decent exposure using higher ISOs. In fluorescence at high magnification where the lightning is extremely bright I can go down to 1/32000s exposure.

No wizardry here I am afraid!

The Euglena is a stack of around 4 images. The procedure here is to shoot many shots in a rapid sequence. I set the camera in burst mode, normally 10 images/s. I have a foot pedal to fire the camera. I track focus and XY-movement with both hands and follow the subject as good as I can in X-Y and Z. When I have everything right I fire a burst slowly moving the focus. Then repeat. I then select the burst where I manage to get a good series for stacking. I never use a flash. I use the procedure for "fast" moving subjects.

The diatom was moving slowly and mostly in X-Y. It was moving slowly from top to bottom and I took the stack while it was moving. Zerene stacker and Helicon Stacker have the ability to adjust for movement in the X-Y direction and also som rotation. However, you cannot have several things in the image moving or even one thing moving and the rest standing still, because the algorithm gets confused what to move and adjust. In this case you need to edit away the stationary things to allow Zerene to track the moving subject. I took away some debris and the stacker manage to stack it despite the movement. Therefore this image has a clean background. You can of course stack it as described above and then add a single background frame from one of the source images to restore the background in post. This can be done in the Zerene Stacker retouching module or in Photoshop.
I normally restore the background but eliminate some unwanted spots and dirt and sometimes run a soft gaussian filter on the background to smooth it out a bit.

The algae strands where sitting completely still and I could just shoot a stack as normal. Around 10 images. Some out of focus algae in the background that I smoothed out a bit more to avoid distraction.

The Cyanobacterias where also sitting still so no issues there either.

[Francisco]

Very nice!

[MicroBob]

Thank you for the description of your method! I was so interested about it because it is a long term project of mine to get into photographing moving objects. Your description gave me several new insights about what to do and what to avoid. When you start with a vintage Zeiss Jena NF or Zeiss GFL with the stage controls at armpit height there are quite a few things to improve.
I have a Sony a6000 which will probably be a very capable microscope camera and the super fast Nikon 1J5. The Nikon is able to take up to 20 full size images with fixed af at up to 60 images/second. It also is able to take videos with 120, 400 and 1200 fps, but in decreasing resolution. This speed is nice for fast plankton photography, for good image quality I would have to set the ISO to max. 1600. For unknown reason the 1J5 has nor IR port and can only be released via smartphone app . One advantage again is the completely vibration free operation of the fully electronic shutter.
For the 1J5 I have a microscope adaptation ready and will use it anyway because it is a very light and compact setup. For the a6000 I have everything but the part to connect objective and eyepiece. I will compare them and have a look what is more suitable in which situation. I probably won't come near your fantastic results but I'm confident that I'm happy with what I will manage.

[hkv]

Thank you for the description of your method! I was so interested about it because it is a long term project of mine to get into photographing moving objects. Your description gave me several new insights about what to do and what to avoid. When you start with a vintage Zeiss Jena NF or Zeiss GFL with the stage controls at armpit height there are quite a few things to improve.
I have a Sony a6000 which will probably be a very capable microscope camera and the super fast Nikon 1J5. The Nikon is able to take up to 20 full size images with fixed af at up to 60 images/second. It also is able to take videos with 120, 400 and 1200 fps, but in decreasing resolution. This speed is nice for fast plankton photography, for good image quality I would have to set the ISO to max. 1600. For unknown reason the 1J5 has nor IR port and can only be released via smartphone app One advantage again is the completely vibration free operation of the fully electronic shutter.
For the 1J5 I have a microscope adaptation ready and will use it anyway because it is a very light and compact setup. For the a6000 I have everything but the part to connect objective and eyepiece. I will compare them and have a look what is more suitable in which situation. I probably won't come near your fantastic results but I'm confident that I'm happy with what I will manage.

Seems like you have all you need camera wise. The A6000 will in most cases produce the same result as my A9. I don't know much about the nikon, but the sony is capable of producing top notch images. Also, the sony is support by Phase One's Capture One software which is THE best tethering software and remote control and is compatible with the Sony A6000. Also, the Sony version of the software is only $60 because Sony is sponsoring the software. With Capture One, you get a very advanced software to control your camera. I put my A9 in manual and control everything through Capture One. Capture One has a "session" concept. I assign a new Session the same name as the Sample I am using, like "Pond by the big tree" and then I have a configurable drop down list of objectives with 1,25X, 2.5X, 4X, 5X, 10X, 20X, 40X, 60X, 100X. In additon, Phase One has a developed concept of keywords which can be included in the image EXIF data. So, I have a custom keyword library with configuration options, like "DIC", "Fluo", "Phase", "Darkfield", etc. In that way the software will automatically name the files accordingly, like "Pond_by_the_big_tree_60X_DIC_57.ARW". Pricesless when you shoot thousands of images in a session and need to remember the current configuration.

[MicroBob]

Thank you for the hint to Capture One. The work flow you describe sounds very efficient. In the mean time this Sony version has increased in price to now 79€+VAT. I'm a bit worried that they just try to meet some sales goals and will inrease the price further and further.
For my cameras I had a look what options are available:
Nikon 1J5: Android app, just live view and release button and image brightness, nothing else, very pathetic!
It doesn't allow series shooting, just single images - very cleverly made for a high speed camera

Sony a6000:
- Android app, live view, release button and many controls availabe, but no series shooting again
- Capture One Pro offers camera control but no live view image for this camera model

Since I don't have much space for a tablet/notebook on my desk anyway I will probably not use the tethering options.
For the 1J5 I would have to build a mechanic cable release like used decades ago . Nikon could have had a lot of future in the mirrorless market if they only had avoided crippling their One series cameras. With the 1J5 they got nearly everything right, nice BSI Sony sensor, articulated display, good control layout and grip, and then they leave the IR-port out. Hard to believe!
I payed just 265€ for it with standard zoom, so I for shure won't complain. It is a really nice second camera, that allows insight into fast processes and fits in a small bag.

[vasselle]

Bonjour
Superbes images

[Hobbyst46]

MicroBob:

I have a Canon EOS-M10, also a "crippled" camera with respect to tethering
Looks like camera manufacturers copy from each other the downgrades of their new compact cameras!

[MicroBob]

The camera market was no fun for the makers in the last years. Most of them brought mirrorless systems between 2009 and 2011 but didn't sell very much until 2015. They struggled to find a good compromise between not slaughtering their halfway good DSLR sales and at the same time offering an attractive product. Olympus didn't have an attractive DSRL system so they didn't have this limitation. Sony didn't sell their DSLRs too well so they started with quite some force. Pentax brought the very nice Q with a somewhat too small sensor for allround use but a full feature set. Nikon and Canon were selling their DSLRs so well that they tried especially hard to keep a distance between them and their mirrorless models. Nikon used second class sensors and only brought a really nice camera, the 1J5 with Sony sensor just before they stopped the whole line.
Now things are changing in my view: Sony is developing their mirrorless system in favour of their DSLRs, Canon has brought nice new mirrorless bodies und lenses and Olympus and Panasonic are doing fine. I can very well imagine that in 10 years DSLRs will have a much smaller market share compared to mirrorless cameras. Nikon will probably fall behind in this development.

The DSLRs have to have some features crippeled then for fairness reasons!

[billben74]

Amazing images.

[Jonnyvine]

Wonderful!

Crisp and clear images!