A flocking experiment

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dy5
Posts: 122
Joined: Sun Feb 07, 2010 7:50 pm
Location: College Park, MD

A flocking experiment

Post by dy5 »

There have been lots of discussions of flocking on these forums, but maybe it's worth adding one more. At least, I tried something that worked well, which made me smile, and I thought I'd share it..

Trying out a phototube from Martin Microscopes, I wondered whether flocking would be necessary. I tested it, and there was nasty flare (see photo). It was symmetrical and circular suggesting a shiny tube interior.

I used KoPro VL Flock Sheet. https://www.the-black-market.com/market ... ck-sheet/ The specs say it has ca. 99.7% absorption across the visual range. Quite easy to work with and no loose fibers that I could see. I flocked every internal surface that could possibly have produced reflections, and even did the port in the microscope.

The results were clear. The 1st photo in each pair is before flocking and the 2nd is after after. The first photo pair is just looking at the field aperture. The second pair is a diatom viewed with a Nikon Plan App Lambda 60x (dry). All settings and post processing (minimal) were the same for all.
.
Iris-flocking-comparison-before.jpg
Iris-flocking-comparison-after.jpg
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Diatom-flocking-before.jpg
Diaton-flocking-after.jpg
.
This is the phototube:
Camera-tube-after-flocking.jpg
The improved performance might not be noticeable at lower magnifications, but at 60x the post-flocking diatom image looks better to me.

Cheers, David

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