Fireworks with the Heine Condenser

Images made through a microscope. All subject types.

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Cactusdave
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Fireworks with the Heine Condenser

Post by Cactusdave »

I've been playing with my newly acquired Heine condenser. One thing it does really well is low power dark ground illumination. When it comes to choosing subjects, there is no doubt that the Heine and diatoms is a match made in heaven.

These images are all taken on a Black late production Ortholux 1 with a field diaphragm. The objective used was a Leitz X4 plan fluorite, 0.14, 170mm objective. The camera used was a Sony Nex 5N, with afocal coupling to a Leitz VarioOrthomat zoom photoeyepiece which was used for framing. The VarioOrthomat Zoom was set to X6.3 eyepiece equivalent. LED illumination. A custom white balance was used. All single unstacked images, essentially framed by the use of the very useful VarioOrthomat optical zoom. http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... 1190#51190

The subject is a beautiful diatom arrangement arrangement by Klaus Kemp. The diatom choice was optimized by Klaus for darkground colour I presume. The sequential colour changes were effected by simply changing the height of the Heine inner cylinder by small incremental amounts. A sort of 'colour stacking'! :lol:

The colours are in order of appearance approximately. There are very subtle colour changes with small adjustments to height. I have chosen intervals that give reasonable colour differences. All colours are produced solely by interaction of the diatom frustules with ordinary light. No Rheinberg filters or polarisation are involved.

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More tomorrow. We are just under halfway through the sequence of 14 images. :D
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

Very pretty. :)
I took the liberty:
Image
Chris R

mawyatt
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Post by mawyatt »

Dave,

Absolutely beautiful images!! Your lighting setup with the colors and background is working very well.

The subjects perfect symmetry is amazing.

Best,
Research is like a treasure hunt, you don't know where to look or what you'll find!
~Mike

Cactusdave
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Location: Bromley, Kent, UK

Post by Cactusdave »

Thanks Chris and mawyatt. Chris- no worries about the animated GIF. See my PM. If you'd like to make an animation of all 12 please do. I thought there were 14 but it turns out I'd managed to duplicate a couple.

Here are the rest of the images.


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It's interesting the way this sequence of colours develops. I don't have a scientific explanation for it. Maybe someone who understands how diatoms generate these colours from transmitted light better than I do would have an explanation?

The Heine condenser produces good dark ground colour with other lenses of higher magnification, but as is well known the effect tends to diminish with higher magnification. I should try a few at X10, these would need to be stitched, but the colours are still good at this magnification, and the diatoms would show a bit more detail.
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Cactusdave wrote:It's interesting the way this sequence of colours develops. I don't have a scientific explanation for it. Maybe someone who understands how diatoms generate these colours from transmitted light better than I do would have an explanation?
Try this...

Essentially you're looking at a bunch of tiny sections of diffraction grating, tipped at various angles. What the diatoms do is select colors from the illumination by interference from small repeating structures. The colors that get selected depend on the apparent spacing of the structures, which means that they change with the angles of the structures and the angle of the illumination. Think of light reflecting off a CD to form a spectrum. As you tilt the CD and move the light, the color at any one part of the CD changes dramatically.

I am not well versed on the Heine condenser, but from quick reading at Micscape #1 and Micscape #1, I get the feeling that as you move the condenser, you change the angles of illumination that form the image. It's that change in angle of illumination, combined with intereference colors from the diatoms, that gives the changing appearance.

If you look at any small section of the image, I would expect the colors to change in standard spectral order as you slightly move the condenser.

--Rik

Sumguy01
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Post by Sumguy01 »

:smt038 Very nice.
Thanks for sharing.

grgh
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as subject

Post by grgh »

very nice.

any one interested just noticed one for sale on the bay uk
item no 112823088694.

lack of funds stop any bidding from me.
used to do astronomy.
and photography.
Zeiss Universal Phase contrast.
Zeiss PMII
B&L stereo zoom.

Cactusdave
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Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2009 12:40 pm
Location: Bromley, Kent, UK

Post by Cactusdave »

Thanks Sumguy and grgh.

Rik-- That explanation, with the excellent analogy of the tilting CD is very clear and helpful for me, thanks. The description and ray diagram in the second Micscape reference is also very useful and clear. The way in which the Heine works optically is easier to understand in this article than in the original Leitz Heine manual/brochure which I have a pdf copy of.

The image shows a section of the same diatom arrangement in dark ground, using a Leitz X10 Plan fluorite, 0.30, 170mm objective. A stitch of the whole arrangement at that magnification is obviously worthwhile. :)

Image
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

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