Fluorescent photography - water fleas, rotifers, hydras

Starshade · Post by **Starshade** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 12:45 am

Hello everyone, I am new to photomicrography and the last 4 month I've been doing fluorescent photography. Just few examples of it:

That's a hydra

And that's a daphnia

As the forum has limits on uploading stuff, it's easier for me to give a link to my gallery http://www.behance.net/gallery/Fluoresc ... ds/1790456

Most of pictures are stacks with modified background

arturoag75 · Post by **arturoag75** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 1:16 am

Well done!
very interesting shoots and technique!
best
arturo

Starshade · Post by **Starshade** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 1:34 am

Thank you,

Basically the technique is epifluorescence, but taking pictures was very difficult. One of the main challenges was stacking as stacking software is unable to recognize what's going on in the photos, so I did everything manually.

peter-h · Post by **peter-h** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 2:54 pm

Hello,
great images ! Please can you tell us some more about your technics. Have you used a UV-LED for this fluorescence and what wavelengh have you used? Have you used Acridinorange?

Regards
Peter

Simon W · Post by **Simon W** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:48 pm

really nice images in your site! Talk about exotic colours and details

Starshade · Post by **Starshade** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 11:24 pm

Thank you,

I think I'll be posting more and telling about techniques.

The UV lamp I used is the cheapest mercury one, wish I had something better.

Then the key part is using fluorescent dyes - sometimes more than one. Acridine orange is seldom useful at least alone, only oligochaeta and two rotifers are coloured with AO alone.

Harald · Post by **Harald** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 5:31 am

Hi there starshade,
Just love your pictures. Fluorescent photography through the microscope is facinating. Your images is of very good quality. Thanks for sharing

Ecki · Post by **Ecki** » Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:23 am

Great pictures! Which other fluorochromes are you using besides Acridine Orange?

Starshade · Post by **Starshade** » Sun Jul 24, 2011 4:50 am

I tried many options, propidium iodide can give good light for example. I will not list every single dye I tried, basically I ended up having very dark images and super long exposures don't give acceptable quality.