Heath Robinson Revisits the Microscope

Recently I read on the instructables site about using a USB web camera with a microscope, something I had tried in the past with fair to poor results.  I tried again today but the result from the camera I had were far from usable. Instead I decided to try once again using a video camera. The sort used for surveillance. I have accumulated a few spares over the years and found one which worked fairly well.

In the instructable it said to remove the lens from the camera and use it instead of the eyepiece lens so it would just  be using the microscope objective lenses. That was reasonable but I found the camera was really too far from the microscope lenses so I made a few mods. I removed the eyepiece, its holder and the part containing the prism:



That meant the camera could look straight down.

 

Balancing the camera in place I found it was now too close so hunted around and found a plastic ring which fitted nicely and raised the camera to the correct height. That I fixed in place with four blobs of hot melt glue:

   

Lens removed from the video camera:



and balance on top of the microscope:



12V power applied and video out from the camera connected to the USB EzCap video grabber I use to get video from the nest boxes. As well as video it is also possible to take still snapshots with it:





Some of the resultant snapshots:


   

  



which is a microscope's eye view of:


On the whole I am quite pleased with this set up. I can't get all the lenses to focus. It seems to be the high magnification immersible ones which are a problem but two of them work perfectly and give me plenty of scope for future Macro on Monday puzzles.

Red Blobs

While out walkies I noticed two sets of three red blobs on the footpath. Both sets have what looks like the top of a metal spike at the centre:



I would guess these have something to do with surveying. Centre mark for a theodolite or more probably nowadays a GPS receiver, but the puzzle is what is being surveyed and why?
I tried some searches on Google, even uploaded the photo, but nothing the same was found.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

 


Last week's mystery photo had everyone fooled or just plain puzzled. The truth is it was a photograph of an Altoids peppermint:

   

Many thanks to all who were brave enough to have a guess.

Will this week's puzzle photo be any easier. I think so.
Guess What:


Please leave any guesses in the comments.
They will be revealed, along with the answer, next Monday
No prizes except a possible virtual Midmarsh Gold or Silver Star.


About the new Macro Title:
The M is a photograph of a calculator button. The rest of the lettering was made using the Art Text Tool in the free beta version of Serif's Affinity Photo for Mac. Since I first downloaded it there have been two updates to the beta trial.

Solar Eclipse, advance notice

For those of us who live in Europe there is a chance to see a partial eclipse of the Sun on the morning of 20th March. The further north you are the better the effect. For those across the pond only the far Eastern part of Canada will see any effect.

There is a map and explanation on the timeanddate site HERE.

The main thing for us is - what will be the chance of clear skies?

The Americas, Asia and Australia get a chance to see a partial Lunar eclipse on 4th April.
South Africa gets a chance to see a partial Solar eclipse on 13th September.
The Americas, Europe and Africa will have a total or partial Lunar eclipse on 28th September.

For more detail follow the links on the timeanddate site.

I seem to remember I was at still at school when I last experienced a partial eclipse and now I have a solar filter for the Canon I really hope to get a clear view to photograph and possibly video the event.

More Awakenings

Sorry, no new videos at the moment.

Early morning walks are now regularly accompanied by various bird song. This morning I was very pleased to hear a Mistle Thrush for the first time this year. At one time it was so loud it must have been in one of the trees surrounding my garden but I couldn't see it.

A few days ago I spotted this insect resting on the waste pipe from the kitchen sink.
Not sure whether it was a bee or a hairy fly:





This morning I spotted the second Small Tortoiseshell butterfly of the season. It was looking somewhat ragged so I guess it was had overwintered and was now warming itself in the sunlight falling on the front door. It was 'shivering' just as bumble bees do when they are warming up the flight muscles:



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Pop Goes the Photo

 


Following yesterday's download of Color Accent Studio Pro (Mac app) I had a popping session last night, partly to give it a more thorough try out and also to practice with the Huion H610Pro 10 inch graphic tablet I bought a few days ago.

















With a little practice it became fast and easy to zoom the photos, change the size of the brush and alternate between showing coloured sections and erasing any slight mistakes around the edges.  I used to enjoy colour popping on the iPad but finger or stylus would often get in the way of seeing exactly what was being changed. The graphics tablet gave much finer control and was a lot easier to use than the MacBook track pad, good and sensitive as it is.

Any fancy borders in the photos were put in with other programs some time ago.
As always, the title was produced using Art Text 2.

Color Accent Studio Pro (Mac)

The Color Accent Studio Pro app for the Mac has been on sale in the Mac App Store at £7.99 but at the time of writing and for a short while it is a free download. This app just does one job - colour popping. On loading an image it is presented as a greyscale picture. Then it is a question of going over the area where you want the original colour to appear. Besides that you can select your own colours to add to the picture. The result is saved as a png file. I haven't found a list of which import file formats it can handle. My test photo was a jpg.

One quick example which must have taken me all of 20 seconds to produce:

Original:

Popped:


This app is at v1.0 and for me there needs to be at least three additions to make it worth anything like the original asking price:
1) ability to crop
2) adjustment for brightness & contrast
2) choice of saved formats