Coscinodiscus

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:06 pm

I have been to the sea to capture plankton. There was not much life in it but using the stereomicroscope I could pick up some diatoms. This is a quick sketch of a Coscinodiscus. I still have to sort out which species.

It was photographed with DIC using a Leitz 50X NPL fluotar. It works quite o.k. on my Zeiss. I made the blue background a bit darker in lightroom.

Wim

Cactusdave · Post by **Cactusdave** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:41 pm

That's a big diatom. Great detail too. Which Zeiss DIC system are you using?

Franz Neidl · Post by **Franz Neidl** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 1:22 pm

A great picture! Congratulations.
Which camera did you use? Without flash?

Franz

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 3:49 pm

Beautiful!

It would be nice to know about the details.

Rogelio

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 4:19 pm

Fabulous. It looks ooge!

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 11:21 pm

Thank you! Perhaps the post processing can be done slightly better. It was shot with a Nikon D3. no flash, my flash is not working properly at the moment, the illumination is not constant. For this subject it is easy enough to use a long time exposure. I have the old Zeiss dic with the plastic sliders and one of the sliders works with this Leitz objective. All my sliders have delamination (my gear has a frail constitution).

The trick of making high res pictures with high magnification is of course making the slie as flat as possible. In this case I waited until the cover slip pressed against the diatom.

I have some more images I want to post ( I made a series of plankton in 3D) but I am about to travel so it will take some time.

Wim

Jan l'Amie · Post by **Jan l'Amie** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:01 am

Great picture Wim. Can't wait to see your 3D's.
Maybe there will be another presentation at the NGVM after your travelling ?

arturoag75 · Post by **arturoag75** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:51 am

Fantastic Wim

!
Arturo

Litonotus · Post by **Litonotus** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:20 am

outstanding quality. I saw this diatom too, looked the same, but it was much smaller than yours.

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 6:13 am

Beautiful picture. It looks like a honey comb in the round.

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 1:23 am

It was not a very big diatom but with the 50X objective it looks big, and because I made a square image it looks big on teh screen.

Litonotus, I had no time to try your filter, but I hope to have more time after my trip. I will post some more images than. There is always too many distractions. Wish I had more time.

Wim

René · Post by **René** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 3:00 am

Hi Wim, nice caption of the foramen. I guess the valve is as flat as a pancake? Coscinodiscus radiatus, probably the most common marine Coscinodiscus around the Netherlands. I've seen it went down to 15 um diameter.

Best wishes, René