MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

It's worth noting that full-frame consumer-grade digital cameras are likely overkill for most microscopy. I use a 16Mp APSC format camera and I'm always surprised by how crappy the photos are "out-of-the-box". There are very good physics-related reasons for that and they are well explained in one of...

It would seem that there's an absolute limit to the NA of the objective of around 0.8 with (any) oil darkfield condenser. I'd have to go through the math to understand why, but there doesn't seem to be any high-mag compatible dark field condenser that has a NA over 1.4 and that doesn't limit the obj...

Hello all, Here is another small test of the Ultracondenser (cardiodid dark field oil condenser), pushing towards the high NA limit. I do not have any objectives of NA>1 with iris or funnel stops. Intriguing post.... I'm not familiar with the "Ultracondenser"; is that a Zeiss product and what's its...

Back in the foothills for a hike when I ran across this dried up rock pool: Screenshot 2023-05-31 225054.jpg Adding to the fact that I'll never look at these things the same way again, I was struck by how much sediment had collected at the bottom. This is a pretty sheltered location that doesn't see...

I tried your rotifer identifier with a dozen stills taken from my rock pools video here: https://www.microbehunter.com/microscopy-forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=18416 The identifier clearly knew all of the images to be Bdelloidea save for one; a rotifer squashed between cover glass and slide that was de...

A polarizer does a good job of eliminating a lot of glare and improving small linear details like cell walls.

I'm currently learning to better use my oblique stops. Do you have a favorite oblique lighting shape? Or shape for specific objective?

A beautiful presentation ! of the scenery and sample. Questions: 1. Details of microscope, camera etc ? 2. The inside of most or all of the rotifers includes a bright red corpuscle. Was it fluorescence (combined with DF) ? the leaky crushed rotifer was devoid of that red stain. 3. Were the green ci...

Cool, but here's a better application...

Using AI to build actual highly accurate 3D models of these plankton.

Maybe I should get off my ass and try that.

Right after I get through my sampling backlog.

Maybe on your day off you could do one for plankton? Well I'm definitely planning on building more useful classifiers in the future - this is my first go. I chose monogononts and bdelloids because it seemed like a good balance of challenging and doable. Putting this tool out here isn't so much abou...

That's pretty damn slick!

Unfortunately, I don't encounter enough rotifers to help your project.

Maybe on your day off you could do one for plankton?

LOL.

....sorta.

No really, could you?

It only rains here about 20cm in any given year, often less. Recently, though, it's rained more than usual here in the high desert and when then that happens things green up dramatically, the rocks get wet, and some of those divots and depressions fill with water. Not expecting to see much of anythi...

Nice shot.

But DISGUSTING!

how weird!

Nice stack, by the way!

That 80x epi DIC shot is really quite good! You gotta be getting close to theoretical max resolution for that lens/camera system.

Thank you all for your learned replies. I'll set aside dark field ambitions for this objective, for now. It does, however, seems to work reasonably well with my DIC set-up. For anyone else reading this, spend the extra money on some decent glycerin immersion oil. The food-grade stuff sold by Whole F...

Yes, that would certainly be great. I just did a quick scan on the web and found plenty of protocols for plant tissue. All were geared toward work in a lab, however. Most fixatives use formalin or paraformaldehyde, but there are alcohol-based options. Working with paraffin requires an organic solve...

details? 1.) For the reflected light I use the Mitutoyo M Plan Apo 2x, 5x, 10x, 20x, 50x with tube lenses 200mm or 100mm. In many cases stacked with the internal focus bracketing of the Canon EOS M6 Mark II. 2.) For the transmitted light I mostly use Nikon Plan Apo 20x / 0.75 / 0.17, Lomo Apo 40/0....

I'd blame your setup. It sounds like you're trying to use something like a darkfield stop in a .90 na condenser and hoping that if you stop the objective down to .80 na, you'll be OK? With great care, great luck, perfect centering, etc., you might get a sort of darkish background. That sums it up.....

So that I don't tear out what's left of my hair.... Is trying to get darkfield at 100x with immersion oil a fool's errand? I can't blame my set-up, it's pretty reasonable (I think): Nikon 100x/160 0.8-1.30 N.A. UV-F Glycerin Immersion objective Nikon flip-out Achromat Condenser 0.9 N.A. Standard sli...

Although it's suggested in some of the comments, maybe it's worth mentioning tissue preparation. Choice of fixative and methods for embedding can have a major impact on your sectioning success. There are many good procedures published, of course, but at least in my experience with a range of animal...

holy cow that's weird.

details?

Looks like it escaped from the Burgess Shale:
That's just uphill from you, right?

Definitely two different Odontella spp. but can't figure out which those are. I caught one too: https://www.microbehunter.com/microscopy-forum/download/file.php?id=31091 But I can't find any online images of these things that show cell grids; even the NOAA images are pretty lame: https://cdn.coastal...

A few darkfield images of some Puget Sound planktons. Nearly all of these images are extensively photoshopped: stacking, contrast enhancement, edge "sharpening", fringe removal, spot removal, etc., etc., etc. Note that despite the considerable photo manipulation, no details are ever added to the sub...

They made them longer so that you could fit one of these around the barrel:

Someone should send them a link to Ebay.

Or maybe they're too cheap for internet at BASF?

....now that you mention it:

Hi Last weeks I was working in a home made condenser for the Nikon Optiphot series. The scope is to have free acces to the back focal plane of the condenser, in order to try differen ilumination tecniques: dark field, Reinberg, oblique, phase contrast, Pluta slit DIC condenser, and DIC condenser. I...

Was it fair to fix the condenser in the same position for the 40x/0.65 Plan as that of the phase contrast position?