Micro Photography

[NoVote]

Anybody here doing this? Got to tell you, it's very rewarding.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFRoZpIAuyk]A Paramecium Showing His Internal Parts - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Recall seeing pics of computer chips where designers rearranged atoms signing their names, or making little pictures. Pretty amazing. Examples below:

IBM Makes Tiny 'Star Trek' Images Using Microscope, Individual Carbon Atoms

 

[NoVote]

HAHA, that's done with a SEM, still out of my reach, although used ones are starting to be available, if you got $100K or so laying around. LOL

 

[Clement]

Anybody here doing this? Got to tell you, it's very rewarding.

A Paramecium Showing His Internal Parts - YouTube

I used to do a lot of photomicrography for my job. Now that microscope cameras are cheap I should get one for my personal microscope.

Thanks for posting this.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

A one-celled critter with no brain, that can't fly. Don't mess with me, man, I'm a lawyer!

(No, I am not actually a lawyer; “Don't mess with me, man, I'm a lawyer!” is part of the description of this critter.)

I took this using the 10× objective and 15× eyepiece on the microscope that I inherited from my father when he passed away in late 2008. Not long after I inherited this microscope, I discovered that I could take amazingly good pictures through it merely pointing a cheap digital camera into the eyepiece. Alas, I have not yet been able to work out a way to use my much-better Nikon DSLR to take pictures through my microscope.

The numbered scale that you see in this picture is built into my 15× eyepiece, and the actual scale depends on which objective I use it with. In this case, with the 10× eyepiece, the distance between two numbered ticks is 122 microns, a micron being 1/1000 of a millimeter. This critter is approximately 250 microns long, or about ¼ of a millimeter.


And here is some pond scum…

Pediastrum. 60× objective, 15× eyepiece, numbered ticks are 20 microns apart.

Cyanobacteria (formerly known as blue-green alagae, but no longer considered to be algae). 60× objective, 15× eyepiece, numbered ticks are 20 microns apart.

Some sort of Desmid. 60× objective, 15× eyepiece, numbered ticks are 20 microns apart.

Spirogyra, with a Bdelloid rotifer lurking among it. 10× objective, 15× eyepiece, numbered ticks are 122 microns apart.

Spirogyra. 60× objective, 15× eyepiece, numbered ticks are 20 microns apart.

 

[NoVote]

To use your Nikon, search Google for DSLR microscope adapters. Too bad you didn't go Canon, cause they come with free software to connect to the computer so you can see what the camera sees, on your monitor. But You can still buy an adapter for the Nikon but you will need to focus through the camera viewfinder. [In case it is not obvious, you take the lens off the camera for microphotography. The microscope IS the lens.]

Adaptors to fit a DSLR are made to fit your specific bayonet mount so you buy it for your particular camera model. Last I looked, they were about $90 and have an internal lens to use when mounting it on the camera, then slipping the other end into one of the scopes eyepiece holes after pulling out the one eyepiece.

This is a crude way of doing things since in the recent past even, no microscope builders made scopes for holding a camera. Some more expensive models of the day had a trinocular port on the head of the scope, a third hole, purpose built into the head where the camera would mount to.

Still, you got some good pics with your hand held digital camera. By the way, look around for some new ocular and replacement objectives lenses and that scope will be virtually new again. Be careful when buying lenses tho, objectives come with different sized threads now, and are made for different barrel lengths, but they are still being made, and not too expensive. Buy new though, you'll get ripped off if you buy from E-bay.

Good luck.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

To use your Nikon, search Google for DSLR microscope adapters. Too bad you didn't go Canon, cause they come with free software to connect to the computer so you can see what the camera sees, on your monitor. But You can still buy an adapter for the Nikon but you will need to focus through the camera viewfinder. [In case it is not obvious, you take the lens off the camera for microphotography. The microscope IS the lens.]

Adaptors to fit a DSLR are made to fit your specific bayonet mount so you buy it for your particular camera model. Last I looked, they were about $90 and have an internal lens to use when mounting it on the camera, then slipping the other end into one of the scopes eyepiece holes after pulling out the one eyepiece.

This one is a very old microscope, and a fairly simple one.

I fear that even if I could get the right adaptor to make the optical connection between it and my camera, that there are some mechanical issues that would arise, merely from the weight of the camera. The cheap camera that I use for taking pictures through it is much smaller and lighter.

This is a crude way of doing things since in the recent past even, no microscope builders made scopes for holding a camera. Some more expensive models of the day had a trinocular port on the head of the scope, a third hole, purpose built into the head where the camera would mount to.

Still, you got some good pics with your hand held digital camera. By the way, look around for some new ocular and replacement objectives lenses and that scope will be virtually new again. Be careful when buying lenses tho, objectives come with different sized threads now, and are made for different barrel lengths, but they are still being made, and not too expensive. Buy new though, you'll get ripped off if you buy from E-bay.

Some time ago, what started as a dispute on another site having to do with the quality of some pictures I had posted of bacteria, led to some guy in the UK sending me a couple of oil-immersion objectives. They turned out to have the correct threading to mount on my microscope, but they had what must be the “barrel length” issue to which you refer. I had to modify my microscope before I was able to use them; I needed to cut away some metal on the main body, in order to allow the barrel to move higher in order to focus with these objectives. Where you see a red mark and a green mark on the barrel, just above where it emerges from the main body, the green mark indicates about where it focuses with its stock objectives, and the red mark is about where it focuses with the two oil-immersion objectives.

Before then, I thought this was the best picture I'd ever get of spirochaetes…

That was with my 60× objective. The numbered ticks are 20 microns apart.

With the 100× oil-immersion objective, I got this…

The numbered ticks are eleven microns apart in this last image. Both using the 15× objective of course, that being the only one that has a scale like this built into it.


This is a close-up of the 100× mounted on my microscope…

 

[NoVote]

Might want to check these out, cheap, very nice optics, not heavy duty, but goof for the price. Comes with everything but slides and stuff

Hobbyist Compound Microscopes