Salamis parhasssus wing scales

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Tue Aug 10, 2010 4:23 pm

These wing scales were photographed at 125X on sensor. From (ZS) stacks of 31 and 48 images respectively.

Olympus BHA, 50/0.80 M SPlan, 2.5x NFK photoeyepiece, BH2-UMA vertical illuminator, Canon DSLR. Polarized brightfield.

Olympus BHA, 50/0.80 M SPlan, 2.5x NFK photoeyepiece, BH2-UMA vertical illuminator, Canon DSLR. Polarized brightfield.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Tue Aug 10, 2010 4:47 pm

Wonderful images -- the bar for moth/butterfly scales just keeps going up!

I wonder, what do scales of more "ordinary" species look like with this magnification and lighting?

Have you tried anything more widely available, like say cabbage or sulphur or tiger swallowtail butterflies, or some of the more common moths like the Alfalfa Looper?

--Rik

Craig Gerard · Post by **Craig Gerard** » Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:08 pm

Charlie,

Beautiful!

Craig

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:46 pm

Charles,

Wow, beautiful.
Now I know what can be done.

Rogelio

scitch · Post by **scitch** » Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:42 pm

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Sun Aug 15, 2010 9:33 am

Charles,

I would like to know the step size that you did use for this spectacular images.

Rogelio

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Sun Aug 15, 2010 11:42 am

Rogelio,

The stepping on these was done "by eye" while viewing through the eyepieces (with the microscope light split between camera and eyepieces).

I can't do it by looking at the marks on the fine focus because the steps are too small. The DOF should be a little less than 1 micron at this magnification and NA, so the focus steps are probably in the 0.5 to 0.7 micron neighborhood. (In terms of angular rotation of the fine focus knob that correlate to about 0.9 to 1.2 degrees of rotation per step... if I calculated it correctly!). Each "tick mark" on my fine focus is 2 micron, so I could do 1 micron steps by viewing the scale with some confidence, but not really any smaller than that.

Will Milne · Post by **Will Milne** » Mon Aug 16, 2010 5:20 pm

Hi

Stunning images Charles!!!!! I'm curious having looked at your work as a source of inspiration and as " this is where I would like to go " , when you say "brightfield " is this substage transmitted or epi type brightfield illumination? .

Will