Broken Glass

[cozdas]

I found this dead insect on the ground on my way to home. It's a black, relatively big (25mm) insect which I though would give nice pictures with my macro lens. After taking few test shots the death cause became apparent: its head was crushed which is very hard to see with naked eye.

Since it became useless for the macro beauty shot, I decided to photograph the broken eye under the microscope. You can see larger versions here.

Info:
10x microscope lens, Canon 7D direct projection. 118 images focus stacked with Zerene stacker. Canon 430EXII flash with ping-pong ball diffuser.

[cozdas]

One more image from a different angle with different lighting (and white balance). In this image the thickness of the eye shell and the inside of the head is visible. I'm also planning to generate a rocking 3D sequence, hopefully with that the structure will be clearer.



And this is a cropped version of the above:

[Harold Gough]

Well worth doing. If you can post some smaller-scale shots we might get somewhere with identifying it.

Harold

[Mitch640]

Very nice work. Does "direct projection with a microscope lens" mean you shot through the lens with an adapter, or shot throught the microscope?

[cozdas]

Harold: I'll post the smaller-scale ones once I get home.

Mitch: shot through the microscope. I said direct projection since I'm not using any sort of "photo eyepiece" at all. Optical path consists of just the microscope objective (and some air ), so practically the microscope body becomes just a fancy "extension tube and a rail" setup.

[Mitch640]

I thought that's what you meant. I tried that a few times, but it didn't turn out well at all.

[cozdas]

My setup is not without problems either:
1- with the initial setup the contrast was awful; I realized that it's because of the light bouncing off the microscope tube surface which is kind of glossy. I fixed that by inserting a normal eye piece with its lenses removed, thus using just the aperture to block the stray light. It fixed most of the contrast issues.

2- I have serious vignetting, my guess is that it's because the aperture is not in the correct location. This is logical since the eye-piece's aperture is located for a light path that eye-piece's first lens bends. Since I removed the lens there is no longer a virtual image at the aperture location, thus aperture blocks some "valid" lights as well as stray ones.

3- because of the microscope adapter I use, the CCD can not be located at the designated location (160mm ?) but further away. This acts like an extension tube increasing the magnification and also probably spoiling the chromatic correction.

but it does the job for me for now, I'm a learning amateur anyhow

[Mitch640]

Did you try putting an eyepiece in the adapter? Mine started working pretty good when I did that. Well, at least better. If I could get even half the sharpness your getting, I'd be happy.

Good grief. You inspired me to try again, with the adapter that came with my scope and no eyepiece in the camera adapter. Not sure what I was doing wrong before, but I just got a pretty decent outcome this time.

[cozdas]

Here is the whole insect, I hope you guys can help to identify it.



Mitch: I tried all the combinations that I can think of, with eye pieces and camera lenses etc. I tried with 10x and 12.5x eye pieces, I was able to get much higher magnification but of course it was mostly dead magnification, didn't give any more detail. Since most of my microscope equipment is pretty cheap, I decided to have as few optical elements in the path as possible which at the end turned out to be the best one indeed.

[Harold Gough]

It's a rove bettle, Staphylinidae. It has similarities to Ocypus and Creophilus but could be something else.

Harold

[rjlittlefield]

I see that Harold beat me to ID'ing your subject, and he got closer than I could. No surprise there!

The crop that you show earlier indicates that your 10X objective is doing a great job at image center. The larger frame indicates that it's holding up pretty well on the edges too. I see no evidence of chromatic aberration (color fringing), which if it appeared is the feature that would indicate you needed to use the objective with a matched eyepiece. Using an adapter with no optics causes an increase in "tube length" compared to what the objective was designed for, but at the relatively low magnification and small NA of a 10X objective, this has no visible effect.

It looks to me like you're on a good path to further success.

--Rik

[Harold Gough]

Rik,

Essentially, it is definitely a staphylinid and looks like a large species and it has no coloured elytra, narrowing it down to limited possibilities in the UK. Some other large, medium to large, medium size and a few small ones can also be recognised. The majority of the tiny ones, Aleocharinae, require dissection to identify them.

Harold

[cozdas]

Cool,
Thanks for the swift reply, I would never be able to find the ID myself.

my specimen looks pretty close to this one indeed:

http://www.redorbit.com/education/refer ... index.html

[rjlittlefield]

It has similarities to Ocypus and Creophilus but could be something else.
...
narrowing it down to limited possibilities in the UK

Of course cozdas' location is not part of his profile, so unless he has told us elsewhere, we don't know where he is located. (Come to think of it, I don't even know that "he" is appropriate! Arrgghh -- this language is way too complicated!)

So by saying "has similarities to", you have chosen your words carefully -- again, no surprise!

Personally, I have never seen a rove beetle that looks as large and squat as this one. Nor as heavily textured, for that matter. All the rove beetles that I remember are slender and glossy. Which could be merely a tribute to my lousy memory...

And now it is time for bed. Past time, perhaps!

--Rik

[Harold Gough]

That's the common one, now in the genus Ocypus.

Harold