ID on my first water image

[scitch]

I was playing with a new microscope and looking at some water from my daughter's aquarium with just two small water snails in it. I came across an interesting specimen so I rigged an adapter for the photo tube and did a stack of 4 images. Didn't come out great, but I hadn't intended to take any pictures when I set it up (on carpet).

I was hoping to find out what this is.

Mike

[Charles Krebs]

Looks like a a chain of diatoms. (Lots of dust on that sensor! )

[rjlittlefield]

Dust on the sensor? I don't follow, sorry.

What I notice are the circular blobs with alternating light/dark halos. But I'm thinking that those are out-of-focus specks on the slide, not the sensor.

Have I missed something?

--Rik

[scitch]

I think you're both right. This is a microscope that sat around for a long, long time and I was just testing it. Tom Jones is going to help me fix it up and give it to a teacher.
But there was also tracks from the stacking. I assume that the not-streaked spots are dust on the eyepiece, prism, objectives, and slide. Could also be other OOF specimens since I didn't have a cover slip handy. Most of the dust is visible to the eye but I have a history of dirty sensor too.

I'm on my cell phone, so I can't tell if all of the sensor dust trails were cropped or not.

Thanks for the ID.

Mike

[scitch]

I thought that the previous picture of the diatoms may not have been very crisp because of the lack of a cover slip so I added one and did some more photos. What do you think? Still not great, but the setup is still wobbly and I'm within that exposure time range that causes the most error due to vibration (1/3 second).

Here's a similar string of diatoms with some spot healing brush applied:



Here's a different subject whose ID is unknown to me:



Mike

[Mitch640]

Can't help with the ID Mike, but being a noob myself, I have found that the more time you spend on the details, the better the images get. When your looking through the scope, whatever does not move, is dust. Turn the eyepiece lens in the tube, turn the camera in the dapter, move the slide around, turn the turret to another lens. And if it still doesn't move, then it's on the sensor.

I am finding that taking the time to clean, clean, and clean again, is the only way to get nice shots. I live in a dusty house, no help for it, unless I move, but cleaning slides and cloverslips just before I record or shoot helps a lot. I bought a nice microfiber cloth and lens cleaning fluid in a little squirt bottle for use with my cameras when I was really into more conventional shooting, and I now use it for cleaning the lenses on my scope, the slides and so on, instead of camera lenses. Coverslips I throw away, since they are cheap and hard to clean right.

If your old scope is really dirty, you might never get it all though. In that case, replacement oculars and objectives are not that expensive. You can replace them if it seems worth it. I gave up smoking a few years ago, but smoke will coat any piece of glass in record time, including sensors, lenses, slides and coverslips. It hunts glass out like metal filings to a magnet. You could also contact the company for a professional cleaning and refurb.