Rotifer and some algae

[hkv]

Hi there, been lurking around here but not posted for some time. I thought I would share a few of my recent images with you. Not much time to photograph anymore, but was out sampling a local lake recently and managed to get a few samples. First time I manage to get Botryococcus! I remember 75RR had a beautiful image of that before, but I never found one in my samples. This time I was lucky!

Cosmarium, 60X objective. Polarized light with retarders. Stacked.

Cosmarium by
Håkan Kvarnström, on Flickr

Rotifer - Keratella Quadrata. 20X objective. Darkfield illumination. Stack and stitch.



Rotifer - Keratella Quadrata by
Håkan Kvarnström, on Flickr


Green algae - Botryococcus Braunii. 60X objective. DIC. Stack and stitch.

Botryococcus - Green algae by
Håkan Kvarnström, on Flickr

[MichaelG.]

Lovely images ... That rotifer is amazing

MichaelG.

[mintakax]

Very beautiful ! The Rotifer is a work of art !

[tgss]

Wonderful images hkv. Thanks for sharing.
I'm intrigued by the rotifer image in that, despite stacking and stitching, there is very little evidence of movement. Is there a secret you're willing to share??
Tom W.

[hkv]

Wonderful images hkv. Thanks for sharing.
I'm intrigued by the rotifer image in that, despite stacking and stitching, there is very little evidence of movement. Is there a secret you're willing to share??
Tom W.

Thank you! Well, the body was still, but the head moved. Therefore the head is barely visible except for the eye and the jaws. These I managed to get sharp in a couple of frames: The rest of the head not.

If I plan for shooting rotifers, I use glutaraldehyde before I put on the cover glass. With risk of deformation and pulled in head and lims. In most cases, I find these when looking for other stuff and shoot a stack despite movement and try my best to get a decent image.

[75RR]

Lovely images

That Botryococcus is beautiful, nicely done.

Love the Darth Vader rotifer as well :)

[tgss]

Thank you! Well, the body was still, but the head moved. Therefore the head is barely visible except for the eye and the jaws. These I managed to get sharp in a couple of frames: The rest of the head not.

If I plan for shooting rotifers, I use glutaraldehyde before I put on the cover glass. With risk of deformation and pulled in head and lims. In most cases, I find these when looking for other stuff and shoot a stack despite movement and try my best to get a decent image.

Thank you for the explanation hkv. In this case "trying your best to get a decent image" turned out very decently indeed!
Tom W.

[Wes]

Wow these are really good!! Especially the last one. I'd be very interested to hear about your setup with the hope of improving my own technique.

Cheers!
Wes

[MicroBob]

Hi Håkan,

great images again!
It is nice that you don't forget us even if you have little time for micro photography at the moment.

Bob

[hkv]

Wow these are really good!! Especially the last one. I'd be very interested to hear about your setup with the hope of improving my own technique.

Cheers!
Wes

Hi, the setup was a BX51 with a UplanSAPO 60XW (Water immersion) for the first and last image. The rotifer was shot using the UplanSAPO20X. Dry.
The first image was in polarized light with a retarder. I have a retarder type that has an oval slot so I can adjust the retardation.
The rotifer was shot in darkfield. The objective has NA 0.75, so the dry condenser did not work. I had to use an oil darkfield condenser which goes up to NA1.4.
The last image was normal DIC with the water immersion objective and a dry condenser.

The first and last images were only stacked. Using Zerene stacker. Then color corrected in Lightroom. Also removed some dust spots in photoshop and cropped.
THe rotifer was made of two stacks. Using Zerene for stacking and heavily retouched in zerene. It did a poor job in finding the focus of the body and I hade to manually select the sharp pixels from a large number of source images. Took hours. Stitched in photoshop. Then cleaned up in lightroom and photoshop. Since it was darkfield it had minor white fringes around the edges of the spikes of the rotifer. I removed them in photoshop.
That's about it.

[Wes]

Thank you very much for the explanation! I will take note of your methods

[viktor j nilsson]

Hej Håkan,
I've admired your work for quite some time. Good to see you post on here as well! Amazing and inspiring photos as always.

Viktor, in Lund

[hkv]

Hej Håkan,
I've admired your work for quite some time. Good to see you post on here as well! Amazing and inspiring photos as always.

Viktor, in Lund

Thanks Viktor! Good to see a Swedish microscope fellow on here. Not many in Sweden that I am aware of with this hobby.