3D Brachionus

[Wim van Egmond]

I have a flash for my microscope but it is an old flash and it gives uneven illumination. If I make several shots after another the flash power drops with each picture. I should try to add a new flash to it but this will not be easy. I have to find a flash that allows the tube to be removed and build into the special tube with optics. But that is a story for the equipment section. I have now made a test set up using a prism (placed above the field iris diaphragm) so I can shoot with a normal flash and now I can make a fast series of shots with an even illumination. It is easier to make stacks now.

The prism I use is not very good. It came from an old camera tube of a lomo stereomicroscope. The colours shift to very blue so I will have to improve this. This is one of the first test shots. The surprising thing for me in this image is that moving subjects like the algae that the rotifer is juggling with turn into an interesting 3D ball. It could be improved by some partial stacking of that area.

I have made the cross eyed stereo vertical and narrow for easier viewing. I did not retouch it. The particles around the organism are nice for 3D. As long as the whole organism stays motionless all the little movements inside and around the organism are no problem.

It is not the best picture ever but I thought it was interesting enough to post.

Wim

[canonian]

It could be improved by some partial stacking of that area

Hi Wim, great capture and good luck on your flash experiments; maybe trying some kind of beam-splitter?

You will notice that once you make a full stack with everything in focus the 3D could get 'busy'.
In my experience the off-focus algae in the green balll adds to the 3D effect.

[Wim van Egmond]

Dank je Fred,

Yes, Normally I hardly ever use a complete stack. I always combine it with out of focus areas and partial stacks. For 3D it is better to have everything in focus. In this case (if I had time) I would remove many of the algae that form the ball. Perhaps only leaving a couple of rows of little algae to show the movement. But I think I'll wait first if I can make a better shot.

Wim

[rjlittlefield]

Fascinating! I had to study this discussion for some time before I realized that I was looking at synthetic stereo.

At first I thought you doing another one of those clever optical arrangements that photograph stereo through an ordinary compound microscope by selecting two different light paths.

The resulting image is very nice. The trail of the moving algae provides a unique feature, almost like strobed stereo.

--Rik

[Wim van Egmond]

Thank you Rik. Yes! Praise to Zerene and who ever the bloke may be who made that nifty bit of software!

I have made many stacks before but never with a speedy flash. I always used long exposures with a lamp so I always made stacks of motionless objects. I will try to improve the quality because it works quite well. Especially in darkfield. Although this is not true darkfield but DIC pretending to be darkfield.

Wim

[arturoag75]

Very interesting as ever
arturo