A couple cool looking hairy beetles

Images made through a microscope. All subject types.

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svalley
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Location: Albany, Oregon

A couple cool looking hairy beetles

Post by svalley »

These are both Cerambicids or Long Horned beetles. I have been working on this group for a while now and this week I have been shooting lateral views of the pronotum (the area behind the head, the first segment of the thorax). The area imaged is about 5mm long.

Leptura obliterata, was not as clean as I would have liked. I ran it through my cleaning routine twice but could not remove little beads of some kind of resin on the tips of many of the setae of the pronotum. 55 layers in the stack.

Image

Neoclytus conjunctus, 39 layers in the stack.

Image

Both images were shot with an Infinity Optics KF2 Long Distance Microscope w/CF4 objective, Canon 40D, (Visionary Digital Imaging System)

The stacks were processed using Zerene Stacker.
"You can't build a time machine without weird optics"
Steve Valley - Albany, Oregon

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Hi Steve,

What magnifications are you recording with the CF4 on there?

svalley
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Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 7:07 pm
Location: Albany, Oregon

Post by svalley »

Hey Charlie,

Here are the numbers for the CF-4, but I do not have a clear idea what this really means in terms of magnification of the image. MAG near focus = 10.7, MAG far focus = 8.0.

I know I should pay more attention to magnification and scale bars, but it is easy to forget when the people using my images do not require them.
"You can't build a time machine without weird optics"
Steve Valley - Albany, Oregon

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

I'm having trouble making sense of those numbers, given the information that "the area imaged is about 5mm long". Canon 40D sensor size is 22.2 x 14.8 mm, so 5 mm long would mean more like 4X onto the sensor.

No sense knocking yourself out if the clients don't care.

What I do is just shoot an image of a mm ruler every time I change optics. A copy of that image goes in the same folder with each raw stack, so they don't get separated. If I never need it, at least it was cheap; if I do need it, it's always there.

--Rik

svalley
Posts: 344
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 7:07 pm
Location: Albany, Oregon

Post by svalley »

Rik, my 5mm estimate may have been more of a guess.....I was sitting here at home trying to remember the size of the specimens by holding my fingers apart. I actually wrote down how many frames in each stack. I will try and do a better job keeping track of these things in the future.

I also have shot rulers with my various optics. Since my scope has an ajustment on it that changes magnification those ruler shots only work for a few calibrated settings on the adjustment. Just this last week I added a finer scale on the adjustment so in theory, I will be able know what mag I shot a particular image at.

In practice it does not always work out that I get all the info about a shot in my notes. I often shoot a whole series of a single specimen at different magnifications, without changing the positioning of the specimen or the lighting setup and forget to make a note. I also get a lot of interruptions
that send my old brain off on a tangent.

All I can say is I will try and do better. :D
"You can't build a time machine without weird optics"
Steve Valley - Albany, Oregon

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

svalley wrote:I also get a lot of interruptions that send my old brain off on a tangent.
One of my senior colleagues -- engaged in the business of overseeing 30 or so research programs -- used to speak of "job-induced ADHD".

But I'm quite confident that'll never be a problem for me, because I'm just naturally well focused and Oh look, a bunny!!!

Planapo
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Post by Planapo »

Rik wrote:
... that'll never be a problem for me, because I'm just naturally well focused and Oh look, a bunny!!!
:lol: :smt044 :smt005

Well, that just leaves me to say: Happy Easter, Rik! :wink: :D

--Betty

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