MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

I had to make a business trip out to UT Austin last week. Decided to smuggle home a sample jar from the university's prestigious turtle pond! (Was humming Arlo Guthrie in the airport)

Olympus BH2 - 20x SPlanApo objective - DIC

Nicely done, Jason!

Nice, and it's almost hypnotic watching it glide and twist

Louise

Beautifully produced, Jason! Have you filmed it in darkfield?

Did you have to stop down condenser iris quite a bit to get the phacus in focus?

I am surprised the phacus did not get suffocated in between your smuggling trip. Did you fly with the small pond sample or did you drive a car to smuggle such precious cargo?

Very nice video of an elegant micro-swimmer!

zzffnn wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 28, 2022 12:57 pm

Beautifully produced, Jason! Have you filmed it in darkfield?

Did you have to stop down condenser iris quite a bit to get the phacus in focus?

I am surprised the phacus did not get suffocated in between your smuggling trip. Did you fly with the small pond sample or did you drive a car to smuggle such precious cargo?

I've seen these guys in darkfield and may have some footage. One thing that darkfield does to these chloroplasty dudes is sort of make them translucent so I think they get captured a little more strikingly in BF. That said, using ShinyaVision, these are really cool to watch because as they twist, your eyes really feel their shape.

This is operating with the iris wide open I believe. The depth of field is quite shallow so you really have to focus on focusing! Stopping down the iris with DIC does indeed produce a little more depth but since it's a fairly low light technique (half is immediately lost to a linear polarizer) I try to keep it open so I can record at lower ISO.

For sample poaching, I packed a box full of stryofoam peanuts into my luggage, bought a preserves jar at an Austin Goodwill, and got maybe a liter or so of liquid and debris in it. I also borrowed (stole) some parafilm from my work to seal the jar extra securely back in my hotel room. It was only sealed for 16 hours or so I'd say. Also I picked up a sample from the Colorado river at a park near the airport. That one was in a used aquafina bottle, so despite my careful prep, I still ended up taking a risk of getting my belongings all soggy. Thankfully that made the trip just fine. Still haven't looked in that one!

Very nice, thanks for sharing.

What a wonderful ballet!