Dancing hydra

Starshade · Post by **Starshade** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 5:17 am

They are such cool creatures I wonder why no one takes pictures of them every day, I made roughly 500 shots and it was sooooooo hard to select what I consider to be the best shots in the set

See more pics here

abpho · Post by **abpho** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 10:25 am

Beautiful lighting. I love these images. Detail is amazing in both, but #2 kills it. Excellent work.

Cactusdave · Post by **Cactusdave** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 1:16 am

Nice images, I like the lighting. The whole thing has more of a 3D 'macro' feel, rather than the normally flatter 'through the microscope' feel. How was this achieved. Did you use a stereo microscope?

arturoag75 · Post by **arturoag75** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 1:24 am

amazing shot!
Arturo

Starshade · Post by **Starshade** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 1:52 am

Thank you guys,

Nice images, I like the lighting. The whole thing has more of a 3D 'macro' feel, rather than the normally flatter 'through the microscope' feel. How was this achieved. Did you use a stereo microscope?

I used Zeiss Axioscope A1 and 5x lens (hydras are big comparing to usual stuff like ciliates and diatoms), it does give that effect and when I look into eyepieces I actually see 3d images at this magnification, each eye sees slightly different angels. The effects remains even at 10x, just most of my images are stacks and I never displayed the 3d feel.

Pau · Post by **Pau** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 2:23 am

Excellent pictures

Starshade wrote: ... each eye sees slightly different angels. The effects remains even at 10x, just most of my images are stacks and I never displayed the 3d feel.

Are you saying that your Axio behaves like an stereomicroscope?. It's the first time I heard this kind of observation and, because compound microscopes use the same objective image for both eyepieces it's hard to understand.
In any case the relief sensation is not the same that the true stereoscopic view. For exemple your Hydra pictures induce a 3D sensation because of the excellent lighting and gently defocussed parts, and DIC images also seem 3D due to the optical shear, but both are flat images.

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 4:08 am

Beautiful images, specially the second one.

Rogelio

Starshade · Post by **Starshade** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:05 am

Are you saying that your Axio behaves like an stereomicroscope?. It's the first time I heard this kind of observation and, because compound microscopes use the same objective image for both eyepieces it's hard to understand.
In any case the relief sensation is not the same that the true stereoscopic view.

Each eye sees a different picture, I confirm that and tried many times as I couldn't understand that either at first, but then I started imagining how light might go through a an optical system with only one lens and yet deliver information of space and I believe I understand that, but since I am not good at explaining physical effects I wouldn't start inventing an explanation.

Just a hint: when looking through a magnifying glass you will see real 3d (each eye sees different pictures), now put another magnifying glass on top of the first one. What's basically changed?

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 9:07 am

Starshade wrote:Each eye sees a different picture, I confirm that and tried many times as I couldn't understand that either at first, but then I started imagining how light might go through a an optical system with only one lens and yet deliver information of space and I believe I understand that, but since I am not good at explaining physical effects I wouldn't start inventing an explanation.

It is a trap to get hung up on the detail of one lens. What matters is how many apertures.

If the microscope is perfectly aligned and you position your eyes and eyepieces so that both eyes see the same rays coming through the subject, then both eyes see the same perspective and there is no stereo. But if there is any misalignment, for example setting the eyepieces just a little wide or narrow so that different sides of the exit pupil are blocked for each eye, then each eye sees a different perspective and you can get stereo. Try for example closing one eye and moving your head slightly side to side while looking through just one eyepiece. At high power not much will happen because the exit pupils are too small. But at low power you can definitely see a change of perspective as the left and right sides of the exit pupil get cut off.

It is possible to create a definite and repeatable stereo effect by using polarizers at the condenser and eyepieces. The trick is to split the condenser aperture into left and right halves with orthogonal polarization, then view through another orthogonal pair so that each eye sees light from only one half of the aperture. I don't have the links handy, but as I recall this technique is described in detail at micscape and by Wim van Egmond.

--Rik

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:10 am

Very nice pair of images! The 3D feel in these images is probably because the darkfield is oblique. There is more light coming from one side creating a highlight and shadow. Very well done!

And yes, that 3D trick is one of the things I discovered right after bought my first microscope. I was doing a lot of 3D photography and found out that when I shifted the condenser the background shifted. With this I could make 3D images with a normal compound microscope. I started trying all kinds of techniques and found out you can use plastic polarised filters (from 3D glasses) place two halves in the condenser, each halve with opposite polarisation direction and if you do the same with filters above the eyepiece of the binocular you can see 3D. You do have to lower the condenser.

The binocular may depolarise resulting in a less good effect. You can also use anaglyph filters, red and blue.

Beware of the totally outdate approach of webdesign. brrrr.
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/art98/milli.html

Wim

Starshade · Post by **Starshade** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:36 am

Thank you Rik and Wim, I was very excited to about such possibility and certainly will try in in the future, wish my research project involved microscopy so I could do all that tricks for a better purpose than having fun=(