Newbie learns to take images, dtsh edition
Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:51 pm
I am very much the newie when it comes to imaging, so please don't expect too much. My intent is to have a place to put what I've learned and to have a spot where I can look back on what I have accomplished (or not!).
I have a few different microscopes, but I will try to mention exactly which one is in use for the imagaing as I often find myself looking at the images others take and wonder about the setup. Please feel free to ask questions, offer advice, etc.
The microscope this was taken with is an American Optical Series 10. I have a few of these as I took the "buy several used scopes and cobble together the best" path of acquiring what I wanted. There are features I really like about the AO 10 series and features that aren't so great, but the good far outweight the bad IMO and one can get a really nice system for not a lot of money. This isn't the nicest one I have, but it's the one I most recently cleaned and lubbed, so it makes sense to test it out.
Kindly allow me a slight diversion before I get started for those not familiar with the AO10. It's an infinity based system, so one is somewhat limited to the objectives produced by AO, but on the plus side they produced a number of good objectives. One of the features I really like about the AO10 is that the stage is fixed and doesn't move, instead it's the nose/objective turret that moves up and down for focus. What that means is if you focus down too far the objective just rests on the slide instead of crushing the two together. The focus mechanism, when cleaned and lubricated, is silky smooth. I really like the focus mechanism and maybe I'll take pictures of the next one I tear down to clean. The issues I've seen on some other platforms where the focus drifts due to gravity isn't a problem with this design.
All of the obbjectives on this one are plan achromats, 4x (1017), 10x (1019), 40x (1309), and 100x (1311). The 40x and 100x are "Advanced Plan Achromats" and perform a little better than the previous models they replaced. The objectives for this series are compatible with the 110 series, though usually the 110's have the newer objectives and many of the stock 10's the older ones. For the most part, even the older series objectives perform very well.
The condenser is the aspheric (1084) with the auxiliary lens to give the 4x a fully illuminated field. I have the basic Abbe condenser for the AO10 as well, but it's on another stand. Two points about the standard condensers on the AO10 platform; one, they aren't centerable, the fork aligns them and that's that. I don't find it a big deal myself, but there is a less common centerable condenser which I have on one of the other stands as well. The second is that the filter holder isn't very nice, but a simple 3D printed adapter allows using most of the common filters fine. Do note that on non-centerable condensers some filters, such as darkfield patch stops, might not work quite as well. This doesn't matter so much to me as I have a darkfield condenser on yet anouther stand (have I mentioned how inexpensive the AO10 are if you're patient and how many accessories they have?)
The illuminator is the 17w 1036A with the 1051 transformer. The 1036A has adjustments to allow the light to be centered under the condenser, but is otherwise the same as the 1036, both having a neutral density filter that can be swung into place.
The head is a trinocular, the switch flips it between 100% eyepieces and 100% photo tube. Most of the heads I have needed cleaning and lube badly as the interpupilary adjustment was siezed with old grease. If you try fixing these, you'll need a set of bristol spline wrenches for a couple of the screws.
I think that's a good enough overview of the microscope itself, now onto the rest...
The camera is an older Canon T2i (18MP) that I coupled to a 10x (171) eyepiece inserted into the phototube with a simple 3D printed adapter. The camera is using an 18-55m lens set on roughly 28mm or so. I'm still experimenting with this a bit. I'm using a wired remote to trigger the shutter. I'm just now reading camera docs, so kindly excuse my nearly total ignorance in this area.
For stacking software I'm using ufraw to convert from Canon's CR2 format to png, mogrify (from ImageMagik) to convert from png to tif (I get errors if I go directly from CR2 to tif with ufraw), then I use align_image_stack from the Hugins tools, and lastly enfuse to assemble it all together. I'm using these because they're what I have and didn't cost me anything, not because I think they're superior. Any other image processing is largely done in gimp.
So all that text and now for some images.
First, the AO10... And now with the camera set in place. And lastly, the first attempt I'm happy enough with to share (it's not my first attempt, but not far from it). It's a small copepod collected here on my property. Imaged with the 10x objective from 21 images.
I have a few different microscopes, but I will try to mention exactly which one is in use for the imagaing as I often find myself looking at the images others take and wonder about the setup. Please feel free to ask questions, offer advice, etc.
The microscope this was taken with is an American Optical Series 10. I have a few of these as I took the "buy several used scopes and cobble together the best" path of acquiring what I wanted. There are features I really like about the AO 10 series and features that aren't so great, but the good far outweight the bad IMO and one can get a really nice system for not a lot of money. This isn't the nicest one I have, but it's the one I most recently cleaned and lubbed, so it makes sense to test it out.
Kindly allow me a slight diversion before I get started for those not familiar with the AO10. It's an infinity based system, so one is somewhat limited to the objectives produced by AO, but on the plus side they produced a number of good objectives. One of the features I really like about the AO10 is that the stage is fixed and doesn't move, instead it's the nose/objective turret that moves up and down for focus. What that means is if you focus down too far the objective just rests on the slide instead of crushing the two together. The focus mechanism, when cleaned and lubricated, is silky smooth. I really like the focus mechanism and maybe I'll take pictures of the next one I tear down to clean. The issues I've seen on some other platforms where the focus drifts due to gravity isn't a problem with this design.
All of the obbjectives on this one are plan achromats, 4x (1017), 10x (1019), 40x (1309), and 100x (1311). The 40x and 100x are "Advanced Plan Achromats" and perform a little better than the previous models they replaced. The objectives for this series are compatible with the 110 series, though usually the 110's have the newer objectives and many of the stock 10's the older ones. For the most part, even the older series objectives perform very well.
The condenser is the aspheric (1084) with the auxiliary lens to give the 4x a fully illuminated field. I have the basic Abbe condenser for the AO10 as well, but it's on another stand. Two points about the standard condensers on the AO10 platform; one, they aren't centerable, the fork aligns them and that's that. I don't find it a big deal myself, but there is a less common centerable condenser which I have on one of the other stands as well. The second is that the filter holder isn't very nice, but a simple 3D printed adapter allows using most of the common filters fine. Do note that on non-centerable condensers some filters, such as darkfield patch stops, might not work quite as well. This doesn't matter so much to me as I have a darkfield condenser on yet anouther stand (have I mentioned how inexpensive the AO10 are if you're patient and how many accessories they have?)
The illuminator is the 17w 1036A with the 1051 transformer. The 1036A has adjustments to allow the light to be centered under the condenser, but is otherwise the same as the 1036, both having a neutral density filter that can be swung into place.
The head is a trinocular, the switch flips it between 100% eyepieces and 100% photo tube. Most of the heads I have needed cleaning and lube badly as the interpupilary adjustment was siezed with old grease. If you try fixing these, you'll need a set of bristol spline wrenches for a couple of the screws.
I think that's a good enough overview of the microscope itself, now onto the rest...
The camera is an older Canon T2i (18MP) that I coupled to a 10x (171) eyepiece inserted into the phototube with a simple 3D printed adapter. The camera is using an 18-55m lens set on roughly 28mm or so. I'm still experimenting with this a bit. I'm using a wired remote to trigger the shutter. I'm just now reading camera docs, so kindly excuse my nearly total ignorance in this area.
For stacking software I'm using ufraw to convert from Canon's CR2 format to png, mogrify (from ImageMagik) to convert from png to tif (I get errors if I go directly from CR2 to tif with ufraw), then I use align_image_stack from the Hugins tools, and lastly enfuse to assemble it all together. I'm using these because they're what I have and didn't cost me anything, not because I think they're superior. Any other image processing is largely done in gimp.
So all that text and now for some images.
First, the AO10... And now with the camera set in place. And lastly, the first attempt I'm happy enough with to share (it's not my first attempt, but not far from it). It's a small copepod collected here on my property. Imaged with the 10x objective from 21 images.