Yesterday I found myself in need of an article published in the journal Diatom Research. As I do not have academic access to this journal, it was going to cost me a significant amount to download and read it (45GBP for 48 hour download access). I mentioned this on the Diatom Images Facebook page, and someone mentioned I should check out the International Society for Diatom Research, and think about becoming a member. Membership allows free access to the journal Diatom Research. And get this, annual membership is 40GBP. So by becoming a member for the year it costs me less than the prices of ac ..read more

Bit of an update today on a new piece of equipment for my UV microscopy work. A few days ago I was at a Quekett Microscopical Club meeting, and one of my microscopy friends approached me and offered me something they had recently got as part of a consignment of microscope parts – a condenser made by Beck and described as ‘Quartz condenser, NA 1.25, W.I.’. I nearly fell off my seat, as quartz condensers are rather rare. Anyway I jumped at the chance to have it, and this post shares some initial images of it, and shows the transmission through it in the UV. Here’s the condenser. It came in a mo ..read more

Firstly, apologies for not posting a lot recently. My wife and I had a holiday in Tasmania in January, and I am still going through the photos from that (it’ll be done by the end of the month, fingers crossed). I have done a bit microscopy in my down time though, and it got me wondering, what would be my wish list for diatoms to image? I’m sharing some thoughts on this today, some of my wish list I have and others that I have yet to image. These images were done using my modified Olympus BHB microscope, and have been reduced in resolution for sharing here (the original are much higher resoluti ..read more

Firstly, a belated Happy New Year to everyone. I wish you all the best for 2024. I start the year with some microscopy work, but something a little different to the diatoms I regularly share. My day job is in the field of dermatology, and the initial reason I built my UV microscope was to be able to image sunscreen (SPF) products. Specifically to be able to image UVA and UVB sun filters separately and see where they are in the cream. While most of my imaging is done using photographs I do occasionally do video work. This post shares some really funky videos looking at titanium dioxide (TiO2) p ..read more

Firstly, seasons greetings to you all. I wish you the best for Christmas and the New Year. Today’s post is a chance for me to share some of my recent microscope images and also my thoughts on where my research will take me in 2024. I am pretty certain that most of you come here for the pictures (rather than my deep and meaningful conversation), so lets jump straight into the images. All of these were done on my UV modified Olympus BHB microscope, but mainly with 450nm light rather than UV (easier to use with some of the slides). Camera for these was a monochrome converted Nikon d850 from MaxMa ..read more

You can find find diatoms pretty much anywhere, but the range present at one location can be very different to other places. Toome Bridge (now called Toome or Toomebridge) in Ireland is a place which seems to have an amazing diatom selections in the water there with a wide range of very photogenic species. I have a couple of strew slides from there and today’s post will show some images from one of those. This slide was made by Neville Bradpiece, with diatoms mounted in Sirax. Apologies, but I don’t have names for all of these different species, but I have added names where I can. Some of the ..read more

A few images to share today. These came from a slide made by Northern Biological Supplies (N.B.S.) and are from Ramleh, Egypt. N.B.S. slides tend to be well made and nice to image, and are worth looking for if you do not have some. These images were taken using my modified Olympus BHB microscope with 450nm LED light. A 63x Leitz Pl Apo NA 1.4 objective was used with oil immersion. Olympus Aplanat Achromat condenser, oil immersion, slightly oblique. 2.5x Nikon CF PL photoeyepiece. Monochrome converted Nikon d850 camera. Some images stacked using Zerene, others are just single photos. There are ..read more

Today I’m going to talk about dirt. Filth. Detritus. Contamination. Call it what you want, but a dirty camera sensor can have a big impact on the imaging process, requiring a lot of time to deal with in the processing stage. With microscopy this is potentially even worse than with normal photography as the objectives mean that the effective aperture of the lens is tiny, making dirt on the sensor even more obvious. Also as the wavelength of light goes down, the resolution goes up, so shorter wavelength light further compounds the problem. This impacts my UV work. I normally avoid cleaning camer ..read more

Occasionally I like to have a play with some of the unusual historical UV microscope equipment I’ve been fortunate to be able to find, and see whether it can still be used to create images on my Olympus BHB. Last night I got a Bausch and Lomb 53x NA 0.72 reflecting objective out of its box and put it on the microscope. Today’s post shares some images from it and a bit about the objective itself. To start with here are a couple of images using the objective (resolution reduced for sharing here). Both images were done using 450nm light. Diatom using the Bausch and Lomb 53x UV reflecting objectiv ..read more

The Victorians were masters of making arranged diatom slides. While there are still some that have been making them recently – Klaus Kemp (now deceased) and Steve Beats, for example – these Victorian arranged slides remain as amazing works of art, and demonstrations of technical expertise. I’ve recently been fortunate enough to acquire a number of these slides and want to share some initial images from them. The first is one by Watson and Sons Ltd, and is a circular group from St Peters, Hungary (resolution has been reduced for sharing here). Watson and Sons circular diatom arrangement And the ..read more