Oil Immersion Phase with the Leitz Heine Condenser

Images made through a microscope. All subject types.

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Cactusdave
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Location: Bromley, Kent, UK

Oil Immersion Phase with the Leitz Heine Condenser

Post by Cactusdave »

I had a play with the Heine and a Leitz X70 Phaco fluorite, 1.15, 170mm oil immersion objective. This is not a Pv objective designed for the Heine, but a regular phase objective designed for a conventional phase condenser. One of the virtues of the Heine is that it is supposed to give phase contrast with essentially any phase objective thrown at it. So I was pleased that as expected it gave very good phasecontrast.

The trial slide I used was the Klaus mixed diatom strew in realgar I have used before.

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... 248#225248

The objective was oiled, but the condenser was not oiled to the back of the slide as I don't have the oil cap. The effective NA was around 0.95-1.0 I reckon.

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/art ... heine.html

I converted images to black and white as the camera struggled with white balance given the dark yellow realgar mountant. I also painted out the background to uniform grey in the stacked diatom image as the original background was just too horrendously messy with phase and stacking artifacts combining with the partially degraded realgar mountant! Camera and coupling as described here:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... 380#228380

Interestingly I noticed for the first time , the presence of fungal hyphae in the mountant. Who would have thought anything could live in pure arsenic sulphide. :shock: Life is amazing.

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A stich of 7 images with Microsoft ICE.

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Cropped from the above picture to show detail resolved.

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Stack of 15 images with Zerene DMap.

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Crop from this image to show detail resolved.

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Performance is very good from this little lens which cost me £35 on eBay! Some credit must of course go the high refractive index of the realgar mountant.
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

Walter Piorkowski
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Post by Walter Piorkowski »

Very interesting Dave and nice images. I will have to try a similar experiment with my Heine equipment. Walt

Cactusdave
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Post by Cactusdave »

Thanks Walter. I like the Heine. One needs to understand what it's good at and what it's not. It's not an especially useful bright field condenser; it can give good (circular) oblique effects; it does very useful dark ground up to about 0.65NA. What it is most useful as is a very effective and flexible phase condenser. If your objective has a phase ring, then the Heine will give a phase image with it. :D
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

zzffnn
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Post by zzffnn »

Nice images, Dave! Realgar seems to provide great contrast there. Have you tried the same phase objectives with a regular KK 8 form test slide?

You may be too conservative on Heine's dark ground NA limit. Almost all dedicated dry darkfield condenser can provide DF up to NA 0.65. Heine's light cone is very narrow and can likely go up higher, even without oil lens. With oil lens, my Heine can provide good DF for a NA 1.1 objective with mounted diatoms.

Heine's circular oblique light works well for think subjects, but produces too much shadow effect for thick subjects.

And I know some picky microscopists who do not like how narrow Heine's light cone is and how it often does not perfectly match objective phase plates.

But no one can deny Heine's convenience!
Cactusdave wrote:Thanks Walter. I like the Heine. One needs to understand what it's good at and what it's not. It's not an especially useful bright field condenser; it can give good (circular) oblique effects; it does very useful dark ground up to about 0.65NA. What it is most useful as is a very effective and flexible phase condenser. If your objective has a phase ring, then the Heine will give a phase image with it. :D
Selling my Canon FD 200mm F/2.8 lens

Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

Why is it that somethings just look so much better in black and white. Really nice work on this set of images. :)

WalterD
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Post by WalterD »

Well done, very interesting post.

Best regards

Walter

Cactusdave
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Post by Cactusdave »

Thanks Walter, Ken and zzffnn.
You may be too conservative on Heine's dark ground NA limit. Almost all dedicated dry darkfield condenser can provide DF up to NA 0.65. Heine's light cone is very narrow and can likely go up higher, even without oil lens. With oil lens, my Heine can provide good DF for a NA 1.1 objective with mounted diatoms.
I need to try this myself by experiment. I can get beautiful dark ground with the Leitz X40 Pv Apo 0.70, 170mm coverslip correction collar, but darkground with the Leitz NPL fluourite X 63, 0.90, 170mm, coverslip correction was disappointing. Certainly there was dark ground, but the image quality was poor with excessive glare and poor contrast and resolution. This could be due to defects in the lens, but by other methods of illumination it is a good performer. I should try a variety of other higher NA lenses.

Why is it that somethings just look so much better in black and white
There is not much 'natural' colour in fossil diatoms, leaving aside the interference colours of course, and black and white seems both appropriate and practical.
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

Jacek
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Post by Jacek »

Very nice

Cactusdave
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Post by Cactusdave »

Thanks Jacek. I'm very much enjoying exploring the Heine condenser's features and hope to post some more images taken using it soon.
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

GaryB
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Post by GaryB »

That high resolution with high contrast really pops out. It looks like you have a very good combination to work with. The Heine is intriguing but priced way outside my limits these days so I'll take my pleasure through others.
Great post :D

Cactusdave
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Post by Cactusdave »

Thanks Gary. Putting the price in context, and yes I resisted for a long time because of it, what I paid would buy an entire pretty decent 160mm second hand binocular microscope, but it would only be a fraction of the new cost of a single Mitutoyo X10 planapo objective!
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

GaryB
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Post by GaryB »

Is true, though I can't afford a mitty either :P

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