At this point I sort of know what I’m doing as far as large format photomicrography goes. Which is to say I can put a slide on the stage and reasonably expect to end up with a serviceable print. For anyone who’s been here through the entire series to this point it likely feels as if this has been going on forever. All told what with the demands of work, other interests, and responsibilities, on any given day when I picked up a film holder I’ve probably spent no more than an hour on the project. Between reading up on things, photographic work, operating the scanner, and making notes the whole things been rather a rush.
Forgive me then if I step back a minute and put a couple scribbles up on the ‘fridge.
Two Scanned Negatives
Two Scanned Prints
Pretending I’m A Photographer
The negative of the lilium ovary section above is a bit thin but has enough density to provide all the detail that’s present in the visual. It was a 1/15th second exposure which I was a touch concerned would be a bit too long with the lightly stained section. The negative of the zea stem, 1/8th of a second, is about right but has a defect where something (I checked later and it was a mote on the System II relay lens) obscured a portion of the negative.
I made up for the lower density on the lilium negative with a bit of a longer exposure on the contact print, I might have over-done it a bit but I’m not unhappy. With the significantly more dense negative of the zea I used what I felt would be a long enough exposure for the contact print, just under two minutes. If I had the presence of mind to I might have dodged the mote while I made the contact print. I expect I’ll give that a try if I ever make a second print from that negative.
With photomicrographs large format really opens up the possibilities for the microscopist. In this the day of digital cameras and desktop photo manipulation one can capture an image with an extensive depth of field and an enormous field of view. Their isn’t really a way to expand the depth of field for the chemical photographer short of better objectives. The field of view can be greatly expanded by making the switch from the classic—notably called miniature historically—35mm format to a medium format 120 film, or low end large format like 4×5. From there the step up to 8×10 would mean capturing the zea stem with a 20x objective or the entire lilium ovary with a 10x. Considering that it’s somewhat strange that in the large format photomicrography did not last quite so long as 35mm, which oddly enough still has a presence in electron microscopy to this day.
Up to this point I’ve made use of standard equipment. Earlier I theorized in an off hand way about how one could knock together a 4×5 camera for a basic monocular microscope without too much trouble. For my next trick, I’ll give that a shot! The target audience would be someone who happens to have a microscope and a friend who shoots 4×5, or someone who shoots 4×5 and wants to give extreme macro photography (photomicrography) as go. I’ll skip over the business of developing the negative, as that grounds been covered, and focus on seeing if I can get a negative at all with a shoebox and a few odds and ends.
vade mecum microscope 