MICROSAFARI - A new series by a new member

John S. Mead · Post by **John S. Mead** » Sat Oct 08, 2011 5:46 pm

Greetings to all!

This is my first post to this forum! I am a science teacher/ nature photographer. I have recently started to "marry" my photography passion with my love of things microscopic. I am producing a series of educational videos for use by my students (mostly middle schoolers) when they study/research microscopic life.

I have titled the series "MICROSAFARIS" as I think looking through a microscope is a great deal like going on safari. You know what you MIGHT see, but there are few guarantees! These videos try to both educate and excite young minds who have probably never heard of the creatures most of us here know intimately.

Here is the first in the series -- "Microsafari : Amoeba" It's 3 minutes & 16 seconds of pseudopodial excitement!

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 12:15 pm

Very nicely done -- I think I would enjoy sitting in your classroom!

I am curious about your tools and workflow. What can you tell us about microscope, camera, video editing software, etc?

--Rik

John S. Mead · Post by **John S. Mead** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 6:15 pm

Thanks Rik!

Much of the footage for this "episode" was taken through the student microscopes at my school over a couple years. Most of them have been there for 20+ years - the only ones with a branding were the Reichert-Jung models with 4x,10x, and 40x objectives & a 10x ocular lens.

The camera used was a Motic Moticam 2000 which was donated by a retired pathologist. sadly it no longer functions with any new ( post 2007) computer chips.

I gathered the clips and edited the whole project in Sony's Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. I am currently in process of adding them to my photography website in a "Microscope Video" gallery (http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/18865860 ... 39_FNnV8Jk).

Over the past month some good luck has come my way and I now have access to some higher quality scopes that were recently purchased for our AP Bio class. We also discovered that the Sony Cybershot DSC-W570 point & shoot camera fits well on the adapters from the old Moticam and gives much better image quality than the Moticam ever did. 16 MP sure beats 2 MP any day! Tomorrow I'll post a recent video of the annelid Aeolosoma I created using this current set up.

Thanks for your interest and thanks for moderating here... it's great to find such a group out there!

René · Post by **René** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:15 am

Fun pojects, John, very good way of showing the youngsters about.

Just a note: in your Stylonchia video, you are showing conjugation (!) of two cells, they are typically laying sideways. That's sexual reproduction.
Normal asexual reproduction by binary fission would cut a cell in 2 (like E coli, not sure how to desribe the difference in english).

Best wishes, René

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:40 am

René wrote:not sure how to desribe the difference in english

How about this? Look at the pair while they're swimming in roughly a straight line. If they're coupled side by side, that's conjugation. If they're coupled head-to-tail, that's binary fission.

--Rik

René · Post by **René** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 11:51 am

Head to tail, yes that's the expression. Unforunately I'm not always sure what's head or tail with these critters

Thanks, René

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 1:11 pm

Me either. But I think it'll still be one's head against the other's tail, even if we can't tell which is which!

--Rik

Ferry · Post by **Ferry** » Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:44 am

Nice video John! My interest is in the ID of amoebae and the large one, after 1 minute in the video, is a Chaos species, probably Chaos carolinense or Chaos illinoisense, both multinucleate amoebae. I could see some spherical nuclei. This species is very seldom found 'in the wild' and if you collected it there, you should be very proud

. Chaos carolinense in Texas? Wow! Where did you get it? Look for a key at http://arcella.nl/chaos