Charles showed superb images of arthropod musculature using crossed-polarized light: HERE
Franz followed up with a similar superb image of the longitudinal musculatire of a marine copepod under polarized light (DIC): HERE
Here is my 1st attempt at an animal with my recently acquired Olympus polarizer set, including a 530nm wave plate.
A 1mm long freshwater copepod, ventral view, from the garden's bird bath.
Not sure if these are the longitudinal muscles (I would expect to see some striations) or gonads (female?).
Top image is with a 4x Nikon objective on an Olympus BH2 with 1.25x intermediate tube + 2.5X Oly NFK relay lens
Bottom similar but with an Oly 10x.
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Last edited by NikonUser on Tue Oct 25, 2011 8:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
You might also want to try a shot or two with the aperture "rotated" slightly off-center in your condenser. Sometime a little "oblique" added together with crossed polarizers can be really interesting.
Thanks Charles.
Yes I was using the 530nm wave plate.
I took another specimen with X-polarizers but no wave plate. The only way to get any muscle detail was to rotate the substage polarizer until everything went black, muscles showed up as white strands. Such a shot (top below) sucked up a lot of light - flash on full power. This is just a single frame as the copepod was still quite active.
Also tried this with the condenser aperture off center - no difference.
I took a series of this fellow with the wave plate in, lateral view. Colours are incredible. Now just have to find something that I know the internal anatomy of so I can interpret the colours.
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NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
