Stereo diatoms (crossed eyed pairs)

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Wed May 17, 2017 12:32 am

My last marine sample was getting pretty "ripe" so I cleaned some of the diatoms before tossing it. Here are four cross-eyed stereo pairs. These were photographed "dry" with the Olympus 50/0.50 LMPLFLN objective. Converted to black and white since there was no color, the exception being the third one where the girdle behaved like a diffraction grating so I left it in color.

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Wed May 17, 2017 3:23 am

Mega Super !

Marek Mis · Post by **Marek Mis** » Wed May 17, 2017 4:34 am

Beautiful and perfect quality images !
Diatoms look like glass and rich ornamented boxes

Marek

zzffnn · Post by **zzffnn** » Wed May 17, 2017 5:01 am

Very beautiful!! Thank you for sharing!

carlos.uruguay · Post by **carlos.uruguay** » Wed May 17, 2017 5:25 am

Super as usual

Pau · Post by **Pau** » Wed May 17, 2017 8:23 am

Wow! fabulous set.

just one point: the stereo of the BW images is perfect but I cant see the color one so well aligned, do other people have the same issue? (I can't see cross eye stereos so I convert them to parallel and use a mirror viewer)

vendav · Post by **vendav** » Wed May 17, 2017 10:15 am

The colour images work for me as a cross eye pair, with perfect alignment.
I've not appreciated before that diatoms could look just like a mix of boiled sweets!
Kind regards,
David

Olympusman · Post by **Olympusman** » Thu May 18, 2017 12:29 pm

How shall I put this? ZOWIE!

Mike

Troels · Post by **Troels** » Thu May 18, 2017 1:17 pm

Those stereo images are wonderful!

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu May 18, 2017 4:06 pm

Wonderful!

Pau wrote: the stereo of the BW images is perfect but I cant see the color one so well aligned, do other people have the same issue?

I see the same thing. I think it is because this subject is a single large cylinder, viewed with a large angle between left and right eyes. That combination means that there are large regions on the left and right sides of the cylinder that are seen by one eye but not the other. The result, for me, is that the sides of the cylinder seem to "shimmer", while the top, front, and back sides all lock up solid.

Looking at the pair not locked up, I am immediately struck that the cylinder on the left is tipped toward the left, while the cylinder on the right is almost vertical. The thought comes to mind that this must mean some error in assembling the pair, but I believe that thought is not correct. On closer study, I think that what we're looking at is just a cylinder that would be leaning a little to the left in a straight-on view, as well as being tipped toward us so we can see the top. Then the stereo rendering for one eye's view makes the top move farther left, adding to the apparent tip, while the other eye's view moves the top farther right and cancels the apparent tip.

In other words the stereo is correct, but we're still left with large areas on the left and right that don't get presented to both eyes.

--Rik

Pau · Post by **Pau** » Fri May 19, 2017 7:49 am

Rik, thanks for your analysis, I would not be able to accurately describe the effect. I'm glad I'm not alone experiencing the issue.

Sumguy01 · Post by **Sumguy01** » Sun May 21, 2017 7:48 am

Very nice set.
Thanks for sharing.

WalterD · Post by **WalterD** » Tue May 23, 2017 8:21 am

Beautiful! I still have to figure out how to watch them though, you use something like a stereoscope?

Cheers

Walter

pwnell · Post by **pwnell** » Tue Jun 13, 2017 9:51 am

Incredible. Looks almost like an electron microscope image with that extended depth of field and lack of halos.

Smokedaddy · Post by **Smokedaddy** » Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:32 pm

Wow, very nice Charles.