Suctoria

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 11:43 am

Suctoria
foto Panasonic Lumix TZ8

Litonotus · Post by **Litonotus** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:45 pm

really good. they look much better here than on our polish forum.

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 1:47 pm

these are the same pictures, hmm, but I think you're right

Jan l'Amie · Post by **Jan l'Amie** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 12:46 am

Very nice pictures.

arturoag75 · Post by **arturoag75** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 1:00 am

nice shots

Arturo

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 3:15 am

Nice images. Was he attached to something?

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 4:50 am

Thank you, leg was underneath.

Chris_M · Post by **Chris_M** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 5:48 am

Excellent!

Chris_M · Post by **Chris_M** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 5:48 am

Excellent!

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:25 pm

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 3:13 pm

Jacek,

Excellent!

I am curious. You use a Panasonic Lumix TZ8, and get great results. How are you "tripping" the shutter? Are you simply using the shutter release by "hand" or do you use the self timer to avoid vibrations caused by touching the camera? (I am not aware of any IR or wired remote release for this camera... does it have such an accessory?)
Also, this camera has a 12:1 zoom lens. Very often it is hard to get a microscope image without some vignetting with such a lens. Can you tell me what focal length you use on the camera and the microscope eyepiece you are using with the camera? Do you need to crop out any vignetting? (I am always curious to know what works well, so that when people ask for recommendations it is possible to suggest some good combinations).

Lastly... have you ever thought of adding "scale bars" or providing some field size information? It is not difficult to do, and it really helps to understand the subject sizes we are looking at.

Nice work! Look forward to seeing more.

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Sat Nov 26, 2011 1:49 am

My English is poor, sorry in advance for any errors.

Charles thank you very much, your work is sensational.

I tested a few cameras, maps Seen TZ8 best picture, has full manual settings, shows no optical defects - defect in the inability to fill the entire field of view, photos, unfortunately, need to be cut. Photos do through the eyepiece. The camera stands on a tripod, I use the self-timer (time 2 s).
How to buy a micrometer eyepiece will add "scale bars". Unless there are other ways?
I hope that what I wrote is understandable.

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Sat Nov 26, 2011 3:24 am

Jacek, you can buy one of those very nice stainless steel rulers with the tiny mm marks on them. From there, you can take an image of the scale with each of your lenses. Open the image, make a new layer to draw your scale on it with arrows or bars and the text, delete the layer with the steel scale, then save that as a new image. Then later, you can import that scale for a particular lens, and add it to your image of a microbe, before you crop it.

Or, buy a micrometer scale, which is best, but expensive.

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Sat Nov 26, 2011 11:36 am

Mitch640 I mean, I have a glass micrometer, so just. Thank you

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Sat Nov 26, 2011 3:10 pm

Jacek,

I have a glass micrometer, so just. Thank you

If you have a stage micrometer (calibrated glass measurement slide) it is easy to calibrate your system. Then you can measure subject size from a picture or also create "scale bars". It takes a little time initially to do the needed measurements, but you only need to do it one time (unless you change your setup!) I'll go over a way of doing this. It really is not difficult or complicated, but with the language difference I hope it is not too confusing.

(The rest of this message is only accurate if you photograph in the same manner all of the time. That means using the same eyepiece with the camera. And also using the camera at the same focal length setting, the same lens focus distance setting, and the same pixel dimensions for all your pictures.

Each pixel in your Lumix DMC-TZ8 camera measures 1.4 micron.

With this camera you can choose and set a wide variety of picture pixel "resolutions" on the camera... such as 4000x3000 (4:3 ratio) or 4176 x 2784 (3:2 ratio) ... so you need to know what is set in the camera. You most likely are using 4000x3000 pixels. (I'll use 4000x3000 for the rest of this example). At 4000 pixels wide, and each pixel being 1.4 micron, it means you are using an actual x-dimension of 5.6mm on the camera sensor.

All you really need to do is photograph a part of the calibrated glass stage micrometer, and determine how many pixels long that measurement is in the picture.

__________________________________________________

Example (I'll just make up reasonable numbers for this example, I don't know what your actual numbers would be):
Many stage micrometers (the calibrated glass measurement slide) are calibrated in 10 micron increments. For this example let us say that you take a photograph of this scale using a 10X objective. In Photoshop (or another program) you measure the number of pixels that make up the distance covered by 10 increments on the slide. On the subject slide this is exactly 10X10 micron =100 micron. Let us say that in Photoshop you measure 221 pixels along that 100 micro subject size. Now you know that when you use your 10X objective, 1 micron in subject size will measure 2.2 pixels in the image (221 pixel/100micron). Write that down! ... 2.2pixel/micron with 10X. You can now measure any "x" or "y" distance in any picture taken with the 10X by simply measuring its length in pixels and dividing it by 2.2. (Remember! You need to use your own actual measurements. I made these numbers up for this example).

The most accurate thing to do next is to measure like this for each different objective you use, and determine a "pixel/micron" value for each. (And for best accuracy use a measurement that goes nearly the full width of the picture). But if you don't need to be super accurate (or are a little lazy like me

) you can determine the magnification change provided by the combination of the eyepiece + camera used. If you don't change camera and eyepiece settings, the magnification factor they provide remains constant with all objectives. Generally I have found that the marked power of objectives is pretty accurate. But again... it is always "best" to measure each objective individually. In the example above, a 100 micron subject measured 221 pixels on the sensor. Since each pixel is 1.4 micron, that means that the 100 micron subject was recorded at a size of 310 micron on the sensor (221 x 1.4 micron). That means with a 10X objective, the camera + eyepiece gives you a magnification factor of 310/100 = 3.1X. If you keep the camera at the same settings, you can apply that magnification factor value to other objectives. That would mean that using the numbers in this example:

A 1X objective would records a image at 0.31X on sensor. (1.1 pixels/micron)
A 10X objective records an image at 3.1X on sensor. (2.2 pixels/micron)
A 20X objective would record an image at 6.2X on sensor (4.4pixels/micron)
A 40 X objective would record an image at 12.4X on sensor (8.9 pixels/micron)
A 60 X objective would record an image at 18.6X on sensor (13.3 pixels/micron)
a 100X objective would record an image at 31X on sensor. (22 pixels/micron)

Be sure to plug in your own measured values in the example given. For your particular camera, the Lumix DMC-TZ8, you should use 1.4 micron for the pixel dimension. I used a picture dimension of 4000 pixels wide. I believe that is the "default" for your camera, but there are quite a few pixel resolutions that can be set, so be sure you use the value for the picture size you are using. And remember that it is best to use the same focal length and focus setting on the camera. Otherwise you really would need to photograph and measure your calibrated slide every time