Photomicrography in Large Format

[Alessandro Bocchi]

It took me two years to complete this Zeiss Photo Microscope and to be able to shot large format photos.
Last Sunday i made the very first experiment with paper negatives and i was quite satisfied.
Taking pictures trough a microscope it not an easy task. I thought the Microscope was a sort of camera but i was really very far from the reality.
In this two years i get just a little bit familiar with all the parts and the accessory of a microscope and i get many objectives and condenser to properly light the subject.
I decided to share here some of my experience and i wish to see also some one else images.
This is my equipment at the moment.

[Alessandro Bocchi]

Toplecca di Sopra - Tuscany - Italy
Aulacodiscus Margaritaceus var. Debyi from a 150 years old slide by Arthur Cottam. About 100 enlargements.

- Microscope: Zeiss Photomicroscope II
- Lighting: 60 watt tunghsten lamp
- Objective: Wild 10/0,45 Fluotar with 8 mm spacer
- Condenser: Zeiss INKO DIC III Generation
- DIC setup: Prism I - Slide 40/0,65 Plan
- Eyepiece; Projection Eyepiece Olympus FK 2,5x
- Others: Beam Splitter Zeiss Tessovar 0,5x
- Lightmeter: N/A

- Exposure: 30 seconds
- Film: ILFORD MULTIGRADE IV RC Paper - 6 ASA - size 4x5"
- Developer: ILFORD PQ UNIVERSAL 1+9 - 2 minutes at 20° C
- Stop: ILFORD ILFO STOP
- Fixer: ILFORD HYPAM FIXER

- Scanner: EPSON V700 and EPSON Scan 3.81
- Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4

[Tin Can]

I was a tech in a materials test lab, maybe 30 years ago using a NIKON Microscope with camera port

Finally We went high tech video camera that printed on Polaroid, which you can do also

I was paid very well to photograph stainless steel metal cracks, from used automotive combustion seals

Micro Sections we called it. Saw a 1/2" section, cast it in clear polyethene, cut that in half and polish it very smooth

Then light with Fiber Optic and search for tiny microscopic cracks, hard to find, eye strain

Then take a B&W Polaroid as evidence of failure

I almost bought the same Film funnel you have, just for fun!

Cool!

[Alessandro Bocchi]

Toplecca di Sopra - Tuscany - Italy
Amphitetras Antediluviana from a 150 years old slide by Arthur Cottam. About 250 enlargements.

- Microscope: Zeiss Photomicroscope II
- Lighting: 60 watt tunghsten lamp
- Objective: Zeiss Jena 25/0,65 GF PlanApochromat
- Condenser: Zeiss INKO DIC III Generation
- DIC setup: Prism II - Slide 100/1,25 Plan OEL
- Eyepiece; Projection Eyepiece Olympus FK 2,5x
- Others: Beam Splitter Zeiss Tessovar 0,5x
- Lightmeter: N/A

- Exposure: 16 seconds
- Film: ILFORD MULTIGRADE IV RC Paper - 6 ASA - size 4x5"
- Developer: ILFORD PQ UNIVERSAL 1+9 - 2 minutes at 20° C
- Stop: ILFORD ILFO STOP
- Fixer: ILFORD HYPAM FIXER

- Scanner: EPSON V700 and EPSON Scan 3.81
- Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4

[r.e.]

Well I learned something. I couldn't figure out why you'd be making photographs of old slides of diatoms (plankton/algae), but apparently there are collectors of Victorian microscope slides. There are even websites about collecting 19th century slides.

[Tin Can]

Good hobby!

[Dan Fromm]

Well I learned something. I couldn't figure out why you'd be making photographs of old slides of diatoms (plankton/algae), but apparently there are collectors of Victorian microscope slides. There are even websites about collecting 19th century slides.

Diatoms' structures are very regular. They're used for testing resolution.

[r.e.]

Diatoms' structures are very regular. They're used for testing resolution.

I don't think that you need a slide of algae made in the Victorian era to test resolution

Arthur Cottam, who made these slides, is interesting as being representative of a certain type of middle-class Victorian Englishman. He pursued astronomy as well as studies with a microscope, and had some success publishing a celestial map. Evidently it was much more common than today for people with an interest in science to have their own microscope, and there was quite a market for prepared slides, although it's unclear whether Cottam sold them as well as made them for his own use. His personal collection appears to have been sold off after his death in 1911.

[Dan Fromm]

I don't think that you need a slide of algae made in the Victorian era to test resolution

They are still made and still used. See, e.g., http://www.diatomlab.com/diatom-test...rsion-2.0.html

[r.e.]

They are still made and still used. See, e.g., http://www.diatomlab.com/diatom-test...rsion-2.0.html

Of course slides of algae/plankton are still made. Why wouldn't they be? I would think that anybody who's training to be a marine biologist has made them. Indeed, living in New York City I could easily do it myself if I still owned a microscope and wanted to. That's the whole point. There are apparently collectors of slides, and not just of diatoms, made in the Victorian era despite the ready availability of contemporary slides. As I said above, there are websites for collectors of 19th century slides (not, I might add, just from England), and evidently an active market for them, including on eBay.

I gather, as @Tin Pan suggests, that it's a hobby, and I can see how it's of historical interest, especially for people who are interested in how science was done in the 1800s. It was the era of the gentleman scientist, an historical phenomenon that among other things produced Charles Darwin. Arthur Cottam, who made the slides that Allesandro is photographing, was a government clerk, probably aided financially by his businessman father, but also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, membership in which wasn't just a matter of paying an annual fee. He's part of an historical phenomenon, and a social class, that doesn't exist anymore.