Thanks for the looks and comments, everybody!
Ken, those various bristles sure have a lot of different textures, don't they? There are a few around the center of the bulb that actually seem to be serrated, although that doesn't show up very well at this scale. Maybe I'll go in with a microscope objective and see if I can get that feature more clearly.
I'm afraid that this topic will be evolving for a bit. I ended up doing a lot of other stuff today instead of working on this subject.
But for those of you who can see stereo, here are a couple of shots that will help to reveal the complicated structure of this thing.
I think these stereo pairs are very cool, because try as I might, I could not make out as much structure working real-time under a stereo scope, as I can in these static pairs. I'm not sure why that is -- I think it's a combination of resolution, DOF, and lighting. I haven't figured out yet how to get pingpong quality lighting in real-time view, and still be able to fly the specimen around.
Turn this stuff into an object movie, as Graham Stabler is working on, and you'd have one dynamite method for conveying structure. Make it work in real-time also, with a subject actually under the scope, and you'd have an interesting lab tool. (Who knows, maybe that's what these
3D Microscope guys are working on. But I don't think so -- their literature seems to describe non-stacked images from a bunch of different angles.)
In any case, enough ramblings -- on with the pictures!
Crossed-eye, large then small, no difference except size. I recommend the large one if your eyes will handle it.
BTW, I don't have precise scale on this thing yet, but as near as I can tell, frame height is just a hair over 2 mm in the stereo views.
--Rik
Technical: Canon 300D, 38mm f/2.8 Olympus bellows lens at f/4, 70 frames per view, stacked at 0.0007" focus step. Dual fiber halogen illuminator at low intensity, 5 seconds per frame exposure. Stacked using Helicon Focus with some manual touchup. Background is printed paper, pushed to exactly the same shade of uniform blue with Photoshop masking.
Edit Jan 12, 2008: Actual measurement is 1.89 mm frame height in the stereo views. Scale bar added to bottom image in first post.