I use a computer monitor to do all of my work too. I don't use the screen on the camera. I take photos via EOS Remote.

I've actually just bought my first pair of reading glasses too, as I need them to choose and position my tiny (50 cell and less) specimens.

Hello! Just popping in to post a few photos to wish you all a Merry Christmas when it comes. I got follow-on funding from my grant to buy a new computer and the photography has got radically easier now that I can stack images in 10 seconds rather than 90 minutes. Yay! Here is the obligatory tiny fer...

Hi, I just got an email from someone who wants to make a proper film about fern gametophytes. I'm interested to help and have written back, but I just wondered if I could mention here in case anyone else would like to contribute? This is the email: (Please PM if you would like the email address to r...

Hi Lou,

Thanks yes we noticed that. My collaborator was happy to get the work done fast and not worry about losing the tips, so I went with his requirements rather than take up more of his time.

I was pleased with the focused bits though. :-)

I went back today for another go and got these better images. It turns out that my collaborator didn't want close-ups of the trichomes, but rather wanted the whole leaf, so these worked out nicely with the 5x objective. That was the first time I'd used it. I used a 120 micron step size. http://www.p...

It looks a lot better cropped. Maybe this is the composition I should be aiming for and maybe I should use a higher magnification lens. I will ask the plant's owner if that would work for him.

This is better if I just take enough slices to get the one trichome in focus. I think if I put a black background on that it might be nice.

If I am just trying to capture the shape of the trichome, do you think it would be better to go to higher magnification and just take the one trichome? That was 10x, but I now have the option of 20x and 50x.

This is the pyramid method.

This is it redone with weighted average. The other one was depth map. I have one more to go but have to dash out. Thanks! This looks better already. Phew!

Thanks!

Hello :-) I have been to visit a collaborator at the Sainsbury Laboratory here in Cambridge and I photographed some of his Arabidopsis leaf hairs (trichomes). The trichomes are very glass-like and the compilation in Helicon focus hasn't worked very well, I think because of diffraction. I wondered if...

That's lovely :-) Thanks for showing me. :-) My setup only has three parameters that can be changed though, so it's probably safer just to stick with the arduino program and avoid introducing any bugs. This is my setup: https://github.com/BioMakers/23_Focus-stacking-system-for-gametophyte-ferns/blob...

We've just changed the system to a wired camera trigger that should allow mirror lockup.

https://github.com/BioMakers/Gametophyt ... neering.md

When I say "we", I mean my husband did it. :-)

Gosh! I'll pass those on to my Utricularia collaborator. Thanks!