Phacus

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 11:46 pm

My work space is still a bit of a mess and I am still looking for things that I miss after I moved house. But I have been making new images and movies. The trouble is that we are all fishing in the same pond and many of my images are of subjects seen very often in the forum. It is not easy to find something new. Another thing is that I realy like working behind the microscope and not so much the computer work. So I am always a behind with the archiving. I still have images from years back to work on. Perhaps the winter months are good to do this.

I post a little image of Phacus. It is not very spectacular but does show all the features of this organism. It is shot with a 50X objective. A Leitz NPL fluotar, that works well on my Zeiss microscope and even gives DIC. The contrast is not so high but that is the case with the DIC set up I have. It is less spectacular than the high contrast DIC that is possible with new microscopes but it does give a subtle effect.

The trick with this organism is to capture it just before the slide is too flat. I manually combined a couple of focus layers to show a bit more of the structures.

Wim

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:27 am

beautiful photo

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 7:39 am

Vey nice!

Rogelio

Litonotus · Post by **Litonotus** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 7:54 am

very nice, looks like an onion (:

pwnell · Post by **pwnell** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 10:22 am

Excellently done. I have tried to photograph these before but it is incredibly hard! They are like little flying saucers in the way they bank and rotate - at least if this is the same species I have seen.

And regarding DIC and contrast - in my humble opinion, from an aesthetic point of view, I generally prefer smooth tonal transitions in DIC images (like this one) to extreme contrast that usually is accompanied by posterisation, harsh edges and hard transition areas.

arturoag75 · Post by **arturoag75** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 10:54 am

Excellent Wim ..it's a jawel

Arturo

Ecki · Post by **Ecki** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 11:16 am

Great shot Wim.

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Tue Nov 27, 2012 2:35 pm

Thank you all for the heart warming comments. What a nice bunch of people are inhabiting this forum!

I have tried to picture this image before but this was my best result so far. You have to wait until the slide is almost flat. A moment later and the cell becomes distorted. In order to be just in time before the organism is flattened too much I watch the bacteria growing against the cover slip. With these you can see how close the surface of the cover slip is to the subject. Does that make sence?

I also like these transparent DIC but it is nice to have a choice. With the 25X I have I can create quite a lot of contrast but the higher magnifications have a shallow contrast. I shot some diatoms last week. I will try to post them in the weekend.

Wim