Polarized live Diatom (Pleurosigma sp)

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Seta
Posts: 131
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2021 8:24 pm
Location: Castellón, Spain

Polarized live Diatom (Pleurosigma sp)

#1 Post by Seta » Mon May 10, 2021 8:32 am

Hi,

In the last few weeks I could not expend much time with scope and when I did I did not manage to get results worth sharing.
A new stack, adapting to the microscope is proving to be quite challenging. Preparing the samples and working with live moving subjects.

It took me several times until I could complete a stack of this Diatom (ID?) from a marine water sample, it reacted a little to polarized light so I run this one. 22 shots with nikon CFN Planapo 40/0.95 160/0.17; direct projection plus 50% crop with Sony A5100

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Until now with every diatom (or almost anything else) I have tried to run a stack with I had to retouch from individual frames, no way I can get a clean stack straight on. Deciding what details to take from each frame is difficult as I do not fully understand yet what I am really looking at and which details are important to keep.

Also a short BF video I made

One more; this time BF with same lens, stack from 21 images
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A different polarized stack, this time I left the backgound blue, which seems to suit it better than trying to fix the WB
Stack from 18 images, same objective.

I made two versions; first like before showing internal details

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and one trying to keep only superficial texture, more translucent like. There seems to be some banding, will try to fix it

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Last edited by Seta on Mon May 10, 2021 1:56 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Hobbyst46
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Re: Polarized live Diatom

#2 Post by Hobbyst46 » Mon May 10, 2021 8:59 am

Wonderful image, and it looks like a Pleurosigma species.
Would be nice to know the appearance without polarization, since the color of the diatom organic parts is green and/or orange/yellow.

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mrsonchus
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Re: Polarized live Diatom

#3 Post by mrsonchus » Mon May 10, 2021 9:07 am

Lovely image!
John B

Seta
Posts: 131
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Location: Castellón, Spain

Re: Polarized live Diatom

#4 Post by Seta » Mon May 10, 2021 9:21 am

Thanks, I added a short video link that may help with the ID, also run a BF stack I have to work with it, but the diatom had broke by then under the coverslip pressure

Hobbyst46
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Re: Polarized live Diatom

#5 Post by Hobbyst46 » Mon May 10, 2021 10:08 am

Seta wrote:
Mon May 10, 2021 9:21 am
Thanks, I added a short video link that may help with the ID, also run a BF stack I have to work with it, but the diatom had broke by then under the coverslip pressure
Nice video. I tentatively identified from the pattern of dots in the polarized image.
From my experience of handling individual Pleurosima frustules, they are very fragile diatoms.

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IanW
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Location: Lancashire England

Re: Polarized live Diatom (Pleurosigma sp)

#6 Post by IanW » Tue May 11, 2021 5:47 pm

Agree with other comments above - wonderful clean and high resolution photographs.
Zeiss Jena NF, Zeiss Standard 18 and WL

Seta
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Location: Castellón, Spain

Re: Polarized live Diatom (Pleurosigma sp)

#7 Post by Seta » Wed May 12, 2021 10:17 am

IanW wrote:
Tue May 11, 2021 5:47 pm
Agree with other comments above - wonderful clean and high resolution photographs.
Getting a clean stack with this high NA lenses needs lots of retouching; being an APO lens does help a lot.

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RobBerdan
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Re: Polarized live Diatom (Pleurosigma sp)

#8 Post by RobBerdan » Fri May 14, 2021 9:38 pm

Beautiful pictures nice clean backgrounds. Kudos
RB

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lagoonatic
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Location: Florida

Re: Polarized live Diatom (Pleurosigma sp)

#9 Post by lagoonatic » Fri May 14, 2021 11:32 pm

nice work!

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