The macro images were taken with an Olympus D-360L digital camera with a supplementary lens attached, as described in an earlier Micscape image gallery.

The micrographs were taken with my newly acquired American Optical microscope and the Olympus digicam using settings described here. The AO microscope has given me the opportunity to try darkfield using home page patch stops as described by contributors to Micscape.

Comments to the author David Young are welcomed.

Images by the author.

(Editor's note: to fit in the web page, the author's master images have been resized
and sharpened a little to correct softness introduced by resizing.)

A spring flower in the violet family.

A moss leaf magnified 970x. I used Paintshop Pro to enhance the color saturation.  (I basically made a duplicate layer, then applied the 'burn' function.)

Lichen growing on a tree outside my home.

Jaw from the shed skin of a wolf spider, ca. 100x.

A thief ant, magnified 100x, (10x objective with a 10x eyepiece.)  It is my first successful attempt at darkfield. The ant was collected in April of this year and was mounted using nail polish. The image has been untouched save for cropping. To set the scope up for darkfield, I simply cut a dark disk out of cardboard and inserted below the stage of my AO microscope. The ant is a close relative of the infamous fire ant and belongs to the same genus. But is only about 1 mm long and is too small to sting through human skin. The common name is thief ant because it often builds its nest alongside that of another species, from which it pillages food and brood.

The sting from a red ant, Myrmica species. It was taken using darkfield and is magnified 100x.

The abdomen of a thief ant. All the internal organs are visible; the crop, stomach and many of the glands. You can even see what appears to be strands of tissue securing the internal organs to the outside of the ant's body.

The thief ant under crossed polars to clearly reveal the muscles which are highlighted under polarized light.

 
 

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