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Steve Baker () pinched my cheap and basic digital camera and proceeded to produce some images of cells through the lab microscopes with Access to Health Professions students. Thanks to Steve and the gang for these images. Respect is due.
This image is cropped but not processed in any way. Steve is using bog standard lab microscopes with stage illumination.
This human cell image was cropped from a full microscope frame. I then used a 'sharpen' and 'edge detect' filter in Photoshop to emphasise the boundaries of the cell and to bring out the red blobs (ok, Mitochondria? Nuclei? please correct me, cells ain't my thing - I do galaxies, only 1070 different in size!).
Optical instruments such as microscopes and telescopes produce a 'virtual image at infinity'. If you put a camera lens focussed at infinity to the eyepiece, you get some kind of image. The quality and focus of that image depends on the degree to which the camera is centred on the optical axis of the microscope and the illumination level.
Cheap digital cameras allow us to take loads of images and to check that the images are axial and bright using the LCD screen. We don't have to waste film. It is good fun and let me know next time you are using microscopes and I will lend out the camera.
Keith Burnett
Last modified: 2003-10-22