Euplotes, Bicosoecid, Protaspis, Acanthamoeba, unk. amoeba

[Psi Wavefunction]

Hello y'all! I've been on a microscopy binge lately and am in need of some critique on my technique, etc. And a place to discuss/think these over before writing them up for various blog posts (eventually). Must admit I'm slightly jealous of what you guys are finding and imaging ;-) (some of my protistologist friends seem to be busy squeeing over this forum at the moment, by the way!)

For starters, a Euplotes sp.


A bicosoecid of sorts (Bicosoeca petiolata?) There seems to be a need for random obscure flagellates around here...


Marine cercozoan flagellate Protaspis sp. (I haven't learned stacking yet, so sections it is)


An Acanthamoeba sp. from a local soil sample.


Leptomyxa? Freshwater sample. (don't mind the intruding air bubble, those evil things...)


And that's about it for now as I've apparently some resizing to do (is the limit 300kb or so?).

These are, of course, a very biased sample -- most of my images fail and luck plays a big role in whether I can catch a critter still enough in the right focal plane. Do you guys have any suggestions, besides a faster camera? (we have a Nikon DS-Fi2, on a Nikon E800; camera was a great improvement over the ancient one they had from the early 00's, but not sure this was the most optimal choice for live imaging of hyperactive small things)

Cheers!

[Starshade]

Hi!

Unexpected person here, I remember you from your blogs... and in fact we exchanged mails on several occasions before (I borrowed your phylogeny tree for my movie). Welcome anyway!

Your images look good, but some things could be fixed. Could you please tell which equipment you are using (objectives, their abberation correction and NA, as well as what type of connector you have) - that might shed light on the current problems.

For this moment I can see a problem with de-interlacing. Is your nikon DS-Fi2 camera analog or digital? I also have a suspicion you used some crappy resizing algorithms... In any case, photoshop has decent de-interlacing algorithms I always use when I have lines in my images or video.

Nikon E800? wow, sounds like an overkill in terms of resolution! But nice cam.

Added: The other thing - noise suppression makes images neat. Photoshop has an imagenomic plugin that is very good at such tasks. However, I recommend applying NR only on the background, not on the whole pic. I tried it (along with de-interlacing and levels tweaking) on your pics and they look awesome afterwards.

Also, are you sure the scope is perfectly aligned? The last picture screams that it's not...

[René]

Hi Psi, nice to see you here. Too many little strange things around, any input is appreciated. Can't really help you on the imaging quality discussion, but for speed you could go towards flash. LED is becoming an option though, with the Luminus SST50 I get about twice the amount of light as 100W halogen, the SST90 will get you even more. And with the large surface of the chip you could even remove the diffuser out of the lightpath, that brings it easlily up an order of magnitude above the halogen. If you're handy with electronics, you could build a 'flash' option on your controller, connected to the camera trigger.

BTW, any update of your 'Tree of Life' in sight??

Best wishes from the Netherlands, René