first photomicrograph

[dariuskersulis]

Hi my name is Darius. I've been drooling over a lot of the pictures in this forum for the last couple of months which led to pulling a plug and buying used Nikon Optiphot with DIC setup. I don't have any previous microscopy experience so I was completely blown away to see those critters in such a sharp detail. I'm extremely frustrated seeing all this diversity and knowing so little about them. I suppose it will take time.

I'm still working on flash setup and this is my first, and as much as I could polished photomicrograph.

40x Plan Achromat, DIC, Canon T3i, 1/125 ISO 400.

Trying too understand why there is so much noise seen in the diatom.

[Litonotus]

great setup and a very good image for the first time (:

[RogelioMoreno]

I agree with Litonotus very nice image for first time.
Try with ISO 100.

Rogelio

[Cactusdave]

Several comments. Firstly it's a pretty good first effort. I suspect that this is a very small subject, and it is good to put in practice on something a bit bigger before pushing to the higher magnifications. If you have a lower power DIC objective, play with that to get comfortable with altering and optimising the DIC controls and the camera setting side. I agree about the best way of minimising noise, set the camera to ISO 100 and leave it there. It may still be necessary to deal with residual noise in post processing, and there are plenty of good noise reduction software offerings, both stand alone and integrating with the Photoshop workflow. This kind of software used judiciously can make a real difference.

[dariuskersulis]

Thank you for the feedback. Yes, it is severely cropped. I've got used to ISO 400 so much that it never occurred to me that the noise is from that. Will set it to 100 and forget it.