I use Sony mirrorless cameras for everything these days - micro, macro and, umm, "normal" photography. For static scenes (no motion) silent/electronic shutter works in all circumstances. However, there is a dynamic range penalty with older models in that the bit depth drops from 14-bit to 12-bit in ...

Steve, I've agreed to give a short course in focus stacking, to a camera club in Seattle. Your rose from https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=286534#p286534 would be perfect to use an example, attributed to you of course. Is it OK if I do that, and can I also include the image in ...

<snip> Do you run into people (who don't do macro or close up photography) who believe that focus stacking has to be super-fussy, with large #s of pictures and a rock steady mount? I've seen that a lot but my message is that it can be pretty simple. I generally don't "run into people" because as an...

I lamented the lack of automatic focus bracketing on Sony cameras for a couple of years, then gave up waiting and practiced doing it manually. Glad I did too as it's proven very handy, though mainly in the field for me (handheld or with a monopod). There are a surprising number of usable approaches ...

Wonderful set. Lots of context and even more lovely zooming in for detail. Just how I like it! Ta.

An image search for "crested duck" turns up loads of similar ones.

That's a fantastic image. How did you get the diatom pair to exactly stand on edge? That must have been hard. Thanks Lou. Pure chance and trivially easy in this case. It had simply settled that way in the strew! But it's easy enough to place them with a manipulator too as static tends to hold them ...

Thanks for the detail shot. You've *just* got the punctae resolved in a few spots. Miniliform, at least. Any idea on their spacing?

I see. This means that I can keep observing and see the whole life cycle. I will try.... 20221222160730.jpg You certainly can observe the full life cycle, but not for individuals locked under a cover slip. AFAIK, conditions there are not conducive to multiplication at all (probably too little silic...

...I wonder, what will happen to the same size as before? :wink: It will die. The average diatom lifespan is (very approximately) 6 days. Given good conditions (temp, light, pH, nutrients, etc.) a population will double every 24 hours - if there's room to do so. So if the smaller diatoms didn't "re...

Agreed Rik, it's the clumping mechanism, no quantum effect (I should have mentioned that in the original post). You can see several "bands" of volvox building up behind the lego pieces for one thing - before going through the slits. But as you say, the aggregation itself is interesting, and why do b...

This is cool. Great to watch, but I can't help thinking about the how. Doesn't look that hard to set up, given the right cultures, and sparked a fair few ideas too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfQQc4CaNAk Edit: a "how" video by the same chap - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slwkped573s - and ...

... So in short - its totally feasible to get the BX61 working under windows without investing into Olympus software. They ask pretty steep prices for automated control. MM and BX61 are no dream match, in some cases its pretty slow. ... Thanks for that Peter. I will take a look at it when I start g...

Beatsy, I like UV excitation much more than visible-light excitation, because the fluorescence is always (under our conditions) of a lower wavelength than the excitation light (a consequence of conservation of energy). This means UV fluorescence can be any color, but green excitation can only produ...

Hi, this looks like a standard setup for in situ hybridisation (e.g. for genetics or pathology). DAPI is used as a counterstain in many fixed pathological/biological samples. Spectrum green and spectrum orange are proprietary fluorophores used by abbott. These filter sets are very "narrow" and give...