Nice results! I think this is the first time I've seen the technique used for this type of imaging. Seems to give really nice results. Thank you, My interest in Jamin-Lebedeff contrast was inspired by the work of Dr. Stephen Nagy. He had written a chapter for Diatoms: Fundamentals and Applications....

It's been several years since I last posted. I spent my time playing with either Jamin-Lebedeff interference contrast as well as a color Heine condenser. Both techniques have proved challenging and I thought the group may be interested in some of my efforts. Here are two diatom pictures taken with t...

I have spent the last two years working on my Zeiss microscope with Jamin-Lebedeff optics. It has been a struggle, but I have been pleased with the effort in learning a new form of illumination. Getting the hardware to work for generating images took some effort. One of the features of this form of ...

These three pictures show a diatom arrangement, illuminated with brightfield, phase contrast, and color phase contrast (color Heine condenser). The color Heine imparts color; however, it does not appear to add any additional information about the specimen. Nonetheless, the color contrast of the imag...

Cactus Dave, One problem with using the color Heine on this diatom is its thickness tends to create problems with focus stacking when used with phase contrast/darkfield. These are the two imaging modes used with the color Heine and I have to search for my computer files to see if I can get the origi...

This is part of my experiments comparing different contrast techniques for lighting diatoms. I chose Auliscus and illuminated it with two different forms of lighting. One is illuminated with phase contrast darkfield (color Heine) and the other is illuminated with an interference microscope (Jamin-Le...

When you look at the back focal plane of the objective with a phase telescope, you will see two glowing concentric rings. If the filter is installed, the inner ring glows green and the outer ring glows red. The inner ring can be sized to fit the phase ring of a phase objective. The outer ring can be...

I've been experimenting with the color Heine condenser and I previously showed Rheinberg and color phase contrast images. The primary purpose of the condenser is, I believe, to generate color phase contrast. Here is a comparison between the condenser being used to generate a phase contrast image and...

That is correct. The annuli of the color Heine condenser are independently "sizable" and one can have the outer annulus (filtered red) sized so as to provide darkfield illumination while the inner annulus (filtered green) can be used to fit the phase ring of a phase contrast objective or, if you do ...

One of my retirement projects is working with old contrast enhancement techniques used with microscopes. Normally, the diatoms photographed below are colorless; however, by illuminating them with techniques developed in the 1890s (Rheinberg) or in the 1950s (Color Phase Contrast) I rendered these tr...

It is autumn and I thought I would try my hand at imaging a diatom with a color Heine and using focus stacking. The resultant video can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al-0-J60-qg

Brian Matsumoto

Thank you Bill, the coloration from your Nikon objective lens reminds me of that obtained when using the Leitz Phaco objective. I've never looked through a Nikon phase objective--your images are very good.

Brian

I enjoyed watching your videos and found the captions to be most helpful. A question. I noticed the background color change when you switch from low-power phase objected to a higher power one. It struck me the lower powered shots were "warmer" while the higher power shots were "cold". Were both obje...

A beautiful artistic rendering!

Brian

This is a fascinating discussion as it illustrates the difference between theoretical and practical limits of performance. I thought a quote by Roger Loveland from his book Photomicrography: A Comprehensive Treatise is appropriate. “When the acceptability of an image of a specimen rather than the st...