A question for A. J. Nilsen

[tatuvaaj]

I have recently purchased a microscope and found your article very interesting. While looking cyanobacteria under the microscope I keep finding these really interesting creatures that I think are water bears. They move by walking. Can you confirm this from this photo:

I know the photo isn't very good (I had the condenser aperture almost fully closed) but if you think it really is a water bear I'll try to get a series of better images.

Thank you in advance!

 

[ajnilsen]

Hi!
Many thankss for the nice picture. This does indeed look to be a tardigrada (water bear). However, to be absolutely sure it would be helpful with some more pictures showing a lateral view of the animal. If it turns out to be a water bear and if a sample can be made of several specimens fixed in alcohole, I can perhaps arrange for the animals to be examined and perhaps identified to genus or even species. Live material can be shipped in salt water for days and this could aslo be an option for further identification. please get back to me privately if you are interested in ths (ajnilsen@online.no),
cheers
Alf J.

 

[tatuvaaj]

Thank you very much for your reply. Unfortunately I didn't have time to take more pictures last night but I'll do it tonight.

In the meantime I would be most grateful if you would comment some of my first photomicrographs available here: http://www.saunalahti.fi/~tatu/micro1/index.htm

 

[tatuvaaj]

Just an update

This is ridiculous! I have now scanned about 20 cyanobacteria samples and found zero water bears! When I was not searching them, they were in almost every cyano sample. I'll keep trying...

 

[ajnilsen]

Hi!
The micropics are beautiful! Very sharp! How do you make this sharpness when you use as low exporsure time as 1/15 sec?? When I found waterbears in my tank, they commonly were garthered among diatoms.... keep on searching, thel are most likely there somewhere..
AJ

 

[tatuvaaj]

Hi!

I have my Zeiss Axiostar+ microscope sitting next to my PC. I use a digital SLR (Canon D30) that is connected to the PC with USB cable. I then release the shutter (with mirror lockup) with a utility (http://www.breezesys.com/D30Remote/index.html) that allows me to take a preview shot that I can see immediately at my screen. I can then adjust the exposure and focus plane if I need to. Then I'll take the final shot.

I then take the photo to a photo editing software where I do my normal photo workflow (Levels -> Sharpening -> (saturation) -> (resample)). My other hobby is a photography so this pretty easy for me. One thing I've noticed is that you can sharpen a microphotograph much more without actually losing information than a normal photo.

One of the best features of digital SLR is that it is really fast: the sample photos were taken about 30 minutes ago

Here is an example of sharpening.
First, without any postprocess sharpening (The camera does some sharpening itself):

Then, 400,0.5,0 unsharp mask -> resample -> 500,0.2,0 unsharp mask:

You can also create some "cool" effects with digital imaging although I personally don't use these very often (I've just started to experiment).
Original:

Channel mixer (grayscale) -> Invert-> Saturation (colorize):

 

[jamesw]

Holy mackerel! That is awesome!

What lens/adapter do you use to connect your SLR to your microscope? I too have a digital SLR and am very interested.

Cheers
James Wiseman

 

[ajnilsen]

Sorry,
Agree! The shots are great! But,... you have to derict your question to tatuvaaj, the Finish guy who takes these awsom shots!
AJ

 

[tatuvaaj]

What lens/adapter do you use to connect your SLR to your microscope? I too have a digital SLR and am very interested.

My Zeiss microscope has a standard 45° trinocular head. The phototube has a 2.5x lens and SLR is connected to it by a T2 adapter (you can get a T2 adapter for practically all SLRs). So, the camera is used without any lens and the focus is at the same plane as the image in microscope's eyepieces. You can also connect a camera to the eyepiece but since I'm very inexperienced in microscopy I don't know how well setup like that works (I guess not very well...)

This site has excellent information about microscopy and photomicrography: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/index.html

I can take a photo of my setup but first I must clean my desk...

 

[sanjay]

Here are some microscope pictures that I took last year

http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/s/b ... cope_pics/

have fun.

sanjay.

 

[tatuvaaj]

Thanks Sanjay!

For others interested in examining cyanobacteria here is a nice page called "Cyanobacterial Image Gallery" :
http://www-cyanosite.bio.purdue.edu/images/images.html

BTW, I have had problems with my computer that are now resolved so I'm resuming my water bear search