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07-19-2020, 11:47 PM - 2 Likes   #1
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Are there any other microscope enthusiasts here?

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I selected the "macro" flair because it's what we have, but in the past two years I've found my interest really lays in "micro". I have two microscopes now. One is a trinocular 10X-40X continuous zoom, and the other is a straightforward Swift 960. It's a high school classic, cheap and effective. With the trinocular scope I'm mounting my camera directly, so the magnification I get is approximately halved from that which I'd see through the eyepieces. With the Swift I'm doing eyepiece projection using a little adapter I picked up on Ebay that clamps onto the microscope eyepiece.

For stacking applications I fluctuate between preferring Helicon and Zerene, and sometimes I use Picolay. I've found the different stacking applications produce quite different results even with similar settings, and some are better for some subjects than others, depending on their characteristics.

I'm interested in chatting with other people who have similar interests or use cases, to compare notes and techniques, to share any little tricks we've picked up, that kind of thing.

My general process: I arrange my subject on the stage, and compose my shot in Live View, and then I turn off Live View because it's a redundant battery drain for me at this stage. It was useful when I was just starting. I use my IR remote to control the shutter release with my left hand, and I increment the fine focus wheel on the microscope with right. I keep my camera set to display a 1 second review so that I can tell when I'm done my stack, but aside from glancing at it periodically I don't watch the screen. I watch my focusing wheel.

I've found I have much better muscle control while looking at the wheel, so I can increment it more evenly and with greater fineness. In this way I'm now shooting manual stacks in excess of 1200 exposures, but only occasionally and for subjects that have a great deal of depth to cover. Most of my stacks are in the 300-600 exposure range, and this proves adequate for most of my subjects. I've found that more isn't always better, too. Sometimes I'll shoot a stack of 600, and then in my stacker I'll select every other image instead of each, and sometimes this produces a better result. The wasted frames are no waste at all, because overall, I do better with consistent focusing adjustments when they're in small increments. If I shoot the same stack but only take 300 exposures, they won't be as evenly distributed in depth.

I have so much fun with this it's almost obscene. I trance out and think wonderful, unfamiliar things while shooting stacks. It's almost meditative, and I try to leverage this to think about the subjects of my writing. My photography and writing are beginning to fuse. My photography is a tool of personal philosophy. This is my motivation to take pictures. I'm digressing, and that should be in a different thread.

In post, I generally import all of my raws into LR, and then I remove the dust because my camera was ancient and well loved, but I didn't keep up with purchasing sensor swabs. LR makes it painless. I only need mask one image, then I can copy the settings and apply them to the stack as a whole. I then select a frame somewhere in the stack that shows the most prominent part of the subject in clear focus, so if I were shooting an insect eye, I'd select a frame perhaps halfway through that shows a thin band of eye cells in focus. I apply some basic adjustments, and then I "copy development settings" and apply them to the entire stack. Finally, I export them to tiff. More recently I've been experimenting with exporting to jpeg with good results, but I do like the tiff format despite its bulk.

When the export is completed I open my stacker, add the images and let it do its thing. I usually restack the same set a few times with different settings. Sometimes I apply retouching from one result to another. I need to improve at this.

After saving the stacker outputs I open up PS and finish making whatever adjustments I feel. I like the Nik plugins a lot, but I'm looking to expand my arsenal. I'm always interested in new sharpening plugins, especially. Of the Nik plugins, the filters I find most useful are Tonal Contrast, Detail Extractor, Dark Contrasts, and White Neutralizer. I think the latter is spectacular for removing faint colour casts and fixing up imperfect white balance.

Important disclaimer: I really have no idea what I'm doing. I learn by feel and trial and error, and I base my idea of success on how I like the results. That's not to say I don't read, I love to read, but I prefer to do, first, where feasible. I just try stuff until I find what works for me, so I'm probably making all kinds of mistakes, and perhaps offering poor advice (particularly about post processing). This is why I'm posting this. I feel by sharing what I think I know, I can learn more from any of you in your responses. I've watched my work improve dramatically over the past two years, and I want to keep furthering all aspects of it.

So, if you're out there, and you do this stuff, please consider sharing what you know. If you want to get started I'm happy to help answer anything I can, with the above disclaimer. Microscopes are amazing for photography. I think they're underused. If you're considering it, do not let it feel daunting due to unfamiliarity. They're simple optical devices, and they can outlive your best lenses by decades. There's so much stuff out there we just can't see any other way, and I find that particularly compelling.

Stay safe all.

07-20-2020, 05:34 AM   #2
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I don’t do micro, but you can’t leave this thread without posting some photos!
07-20-2020, 05:50 AM - 2 Likes   #3
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Twist my arm! To be fair, I thought I had spammed the forum enough tonight, and that's why I didn't include any here. I've been sharing them all over. I'll save you some clicks, here's the bulk of what I've done this season. 2020 Micros - Album on Imgur
07-20-2020, 06:01 AM   #4
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Interesting post, I don't do microscopes but I find it interesting, I tried to buy one once at my former workplace that already had a film camera attached, but was outbid, and I always think it would be cool to get a microscope attachment and scope, but I really probably don't have the patience. I hope you find a replacement camera soon, and keep posting those photos.

07-20-2020, 06:14 AM   #5
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Thanks! I bet if you actually tried it you'd really enjoy it. It's not mandatory to shoot massive stacks like I've been doing. Last year when I started stacking I was shooting 30-40 exposures per stack, at lower magnification, and I mean it showed, but I still got some nice results. Enough to make me want to pursue it further.

Can you imagine trying to do this in the film era? I was inspired by photos of butterfly scales as a kid, but I have to think those memories are embellished by time, because they would have been single exposures back then, or close to it.
07-20-2020, 08:07 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by Philoslothical Quote
I'm doing eyepiece projection using a little adapter I picked up on Ebay that clamps onto the microscope eyepiece.
Can you post a link to this piece of kit?
07-20-2020, 08:34 AM   #7
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Sure thing! It looks just like this one.

It has a 49mm filter thread on one side, and the three retaining screws on the other. Because the adapter is significantly wider than the microscope tube you'll need to wrap the bottom of it in a little electrical tape after it's mounted on the microscope to stop light leaks.

The easiest way I've found to mount the adapter flush with the eyepiece is to set the eyepiece inverted on a flat surface, set the adapter inverted over it, and then tighten the screws evenly while using the flat surface to keep the eyepiece flush with the rim of the adapter. I hope this makes sense in text.

I've found no reason to remove the adapter from my microscope so I just leave it taped up all of the time, and I used enough of it to give it a little extra support against turning or shifting when doing stuff like adjusting the lens, CPL or camera buttons.

You can do some fun and silly stuff this way, too. I tried adding my extension tubes in between the 50mm lens and camera with the whole thing mounted on my microscope. It approximately doubled the magnification without killing the working distance, but the drawback is that by putting so much extension above the eyepiece, any microscopic flaw or debris on or in the eyepiece is magnified, too. Mine has a little semicircle of tiny, tiny bubbles inside it that look like awful amounts of dust, so I only did this as an experiment a couple of times.

I'd like to try a bellows with it, it would be a bit like the poor man's version of a continuous zoom microscope, but I'd need a better eyepiece to make anything like this worthwhile.

Oh, hey I have an example for you.


This tiny cocoon is nestled between the scales on a butterfly, and it's made of chewed up butterfly scales. I'm still searching for what built it, but for context this is shot at the normal 100X.


This is a rehash of the same subject with a couple of extension tubes in the path. Overall, quality is worse. Diffraction is worse. But you can see more of the subject. I can't be sure I used exactly the same settings in the stacker, either, now that I think about it.

07-20-2020, 08:41 AM - 2 Likes   #8
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Some great images there.

Have you come across the forums over at www.photomacrography.net ?

An active community with some very knowledgeable, and talented folks. Lots of great information & inspiration.

Personally, I haven't tried shooting using a microscope, but I do use microscope objectives on my bellows, and the base off an old Zeiss microscope for fine focusing when doing my snow crystal shots. I can get up to approx. 14X magnification with a 10X objective mounted on my bellows.

Fred.
07-20-2020, 08:53 AM   #9
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I've read some threads there. Thanks for the reminder of them. Some of the people there accomplish amazing things. There is stuff for me there, but many of the enthusiasts use automatic rails for their stacking, so there's quite a difference in technique.

It's definitely a site I spend time on. Good site, as is this.

Your snowflake shots are gorgeous! Thanks for sharing. If you'll pardon the stupid question, how do you preserve them long enough to shoot? Do you work outside during winter to do those?
07-20-2020, 09:05 AM - 1 Like   #10
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That little "hitchhiker cocoon" is fascinating! What an interesting find.

I spend a lot of time looking through microscopes- a Fisher compound scope and a Leica 8-35x stereomicroscope, both hand-me-downs that were dumpster-dived at some university years ago, but invaluable to me for the work I do which sometimes involves needing to identify mosses, grasses, etc. I find aiming an SLR with a macro lens through the eyepiece works well enough for my occasional microscopy needs but the dedicated photography you're doing is absolutely gorgeous on a whole different level. Really enjoyed your whole post.
07-20-2020, 09:19 AM - 1 Like   #11
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QuoteOriginally posted by Philoslothical Quote
Your snowflake shots are gorgeous! Thanks for sharing. If you'll pardon the stupid question, how do you preserve them long enough to shoot? Do you work outside during winter to do those?
Yes, I usually set up in my unheated garage. The temperature needs to be down around -10C for the crystals to stick around long enough to work with. Little or no wind is also required if you want to get undamaged crystals.

Fred.
07-20-2020, 09:27 AM - 1 Like   #12
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I hadn't even thought of using an actual macro lens on it. What an idea! It sounds like you could do like I am with just the adapter linked above and a couple of step rings. If you're going to try it though, I'll measure the adapter to be sure it will fit on a 30mm eyepiece for you.

I'm insanely captivated by the cocoons. I must know what made them. I've shown them to a couple each of biologists, lepidopterists and a bunch of bug enthusiasts, and nobody has seen anything like them. Here's a much better shot of them. You can see in this that the colour of each cocoon reflects the colour of the scales used. The bright orange one uses scales from the other side of the wing, so the critters must be quite mobile.



Notice the clear/white "tags" extending from the opening in each cocoon. I think these are dried membranes that held the critter until it eclosed, perhaps being turned inside out in the process. It looks like that to me.

My hunch is that they're some kind of phorid fly, or something along those lines. I don't know enough about them to make anything more than a wild guess. Hell, I don't know enough about anything.

I've found these structures on Question Marks, White Admirals and Monarchs so far, all from the same area in Ontario. Each one looks just a little different because of the differences in the scales of the host species they used. There is a possibility of cross contamination of my specimens, as last year I didn't sort them. I had no reason to. So if this isn't a hitchhiker but rather the cocoon of a scavenger, perhaps they spread in storage before dying off. So I can't say with 100% surety that they're naturally occurring on all three of the species I mentioned.

Edit to add: Thanks, Fred! Maybe I'll try it this winter, if we get a winter. Have you ever tried the cyanoacrylate method?
07-20-2020, 10:51 AM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by Philoslothical Quote
Fred! Maybe I'll try it this winter, if we get a winter. Have you ever tried the cyanoacrylate method?
No, I've never tried that.

Fred.
07-20-2020, 11:07 AM   #14
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I don't know any details about technique but somebody told me I could enclose snowflakes in a small container with cyanoacrylate glue (Krazy glue or Superglue) and the fumes from it would crystallize on the snowflakes so that when they melt it leaves a skeleton shaped like the snowflake. You can use this stuff to raise fingerprints, which might also make an interesting subject on this scale with the cyanoacrylate crystals on them.
07-20-2020, 12:22 PM   #15
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I took a peek at this thread because I do a little focus stacking (so far, just flowers) every now and then. You have some really fantastic work going on here. I'm fascinated not only by your work, but by all the natural incredibleness that is all but invisible until you go looking for it.

I can't imagine stacking 600 images. I get up to about 50 at most and I just want to be done.
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