Polar Eclispe - A Diatom Slide 4K Wallpaper

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josmann
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Polar Eclispe - A Diatom Slide 4K Wallpaper

#1 Post by josmann » Sun Dec 05, 2021 6:36 pm

First of all, I strongly encourage you to view the 4K wallpaper version of this image, as the details cannot be properly preserved in a low res jpg!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15dkh2_ ... sp=sharing

This is a composite image of my diatom test slide. Each diatom was captured in its own camera frame and they are composed of 2-3 images each which I manually stacked in GIMP to achieve crisp foreground details as well as a sharp outline for each frustule. The full scale comp of the diatoms is a whopping 56 megapixels! Scope is a BH2 BHT with 6W halogen bulb. Objective is a 100x SPlanApo (NA max 1.40) with an Amscope oil immersion darkfield illuminator. Cheap polarizing film was placed either side of the optics and rotated for extinction. Imaging was performed through a trinoc superwide, NFK 2.5x, and a Sony A7III. I am able to achieve true darkfield with this lens and condenser if I turn the objective iris down, however I would lose the clearly resolved lineolae in N. oblonga (4th from left) when I did this. So instead I opted for a slightly more open iris which let just a little bit of muddled, wispy background light through. I ended up taking a photo of the plain background as well and the haze in the background of this image is derived from that image - it actually helps sell it much more than a plain black background. Between the illumination setup, the crossed polarizers, the corona-like effects on P. nobilis (rightmost), and the Floyd reference for my last image of this slide - the title of Polar Eclipse seemed obvious to me.

I applied the same major post-production processing to all of the photos and then did some final adjustments of a few individual diatoms to sort of even out the brightness between them. The Gyrosigmas (2nd and 3rd from left) generally come out dimmer and more ghostly, but through the eyepieces they're my favorite to look at. One other cool thing to see here is the areolae in S. phoenicenteron (leftmost) are resolved as actual toroids of light surrounding the pores rather than as dots of light in my DF/BF images with a NA.70 lens.
polareclipse4K.jpg
polareclipse4K.jpg (89.44 KiB) Viewed 1686 times
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75RR
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Re: Polar Eclispe - A Diatom Slide 4K Wallpaper

#2 Post by 75RR » Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:01 pm

.
Does make a nice Wallpaper!

I take it you have seen this article: https://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/ar ... iatom.html
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josmann
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Re: Polar Eclispe - A Diatom Slide 4K Wallpaper

#3 Post by josmann » Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:10 pm

75RR wrote:
Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:01 pm
.
Does make a nice Wallpaper!

I take it you have seen this article: https://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/ar ... iatom.html
I have not - I will check it out! The polarized DF method was suggested in the diatom slide instructions.

I was generally able to achieve better resolution with the objective iris wide open in a more COL configuration, but I wanted the DF-esque illumination so I split the difference and operated in between. Not quite as sharp - but more aesthetically pleasing to my eye.
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zufar
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Re: Polar Eclispe - A Diatom Slide 4K Wallpaper

#4 Post by zufar » Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:44 pm

Such a great piece of work.

PeteM
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Re: Polar Eclispe - A Diatom Slide 4K Wallpaper

#5 Post by PeteM » Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:58 pm

The small JPG really doesn't do this justice. Thanks for making the full size image available.

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josmann
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Re: Polar Eclispe - A Diatom Slide 4K Wallpaper

#6 Post by josmann » Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:54 am

PeteM wrote:
Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:58 pm
The small JPG really doesn't do this justice. Thanks for making the full size image available.
Thanks Pete! Here's a native resolution image of just N. oblonga: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IhgAL ... sp=sharing

What's funny is I was going to compose this differently - I was aiming to make an ultrawide 1440p wallpaper and when I shrank the image down to fit was horrified to see all the little features go away! That's really no substitute for analog I'm afraid :( That led me to make them larger on the wallpaper but I ended up liking that composition a lot more anyway.
zufar wrote:
Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:44 pm
Such a great piece of work.
Thanks! It was a very long night blending all these images together and composing the final deliverable - very sleepy today!
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Francisco
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Re: Polar Eclispe - A Diatom Slide 4K Wallpaper

#7 Post by Francisco » Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:29 pm

Very nice

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