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I just want to bring this to the attention of forum members: https://www.ksoc.co.jp/en/seihin/uv-objective/ Kyocera offers UV objectives designed for 193nm, 248nm, and a range of other extreme wavelengths. Surely these cost a fortune, but they are worth knowing about. Lou

Randon Butterfly Wing Scale @ 20x 0x Internal co-axial & external ring lighting, I need to make them both the same colour temperature.

Butterfly Wing Scale @ 100x Magnification. Showing one mutant scale amongst the black scales. I guess this is a clear colourless scale that has a regular grating pattern to give this rainbow effect ?

Butterfly Iridescent Wing Scale. Unknown species. 100x microscope objective.

The Pollen Changed Colour Overnight ? One of the pollen changed from Yellow to Cyan overnight ? Pollen at 100x magnification. The stage is smooth black anodised aluminium, but not at 100x magnification. Yesterday Today. Tonight, they are both Cyan.

A Pollen 100 x magnification + 100% crop.

I Am Gob-Smacked ! At the age of 71 & getting close to the end of my intelligent life, I am just starting to see these results. I have made some improvements with the Macro Rig & I have plenty of improvements to learn with image quality, I hope I can get there. Here we have the surface of the Poor Old Faded Matchead, viewed at 100 x magnification ! 150 images at 1.125um each step, stacked with Zerene Stacker, that makes the depth of approx 0.017mm.

Kookaburra Feather, full size & 10 x magnification.

What is the Good, the Bad & the Ugly of this light please ? After making my rig very sturdy & with 1.25um steps & getting suitable photos with a 60x objective, I have started getting deeper into Microscope Objective Macro Photography, now with a 100x magnification. All went OK, except the lighting for the 60x objective wasn't enough for the 100x objective. The problem is the working distance is now only 2mm, & it is hard to get a strong light in that gap. I found this LED down light to be suitable with some modifications. The LED COB in this one is 7mm square & rated at 50w equivalent. Many other specs are useful, like 12v AC/DC & either polarity in 12v DC. The Data Sheet.... https://www.ledvance.com.au/en/product-datasheet/6864/31735 The plastic lens pops out with a thin lever, revealing the 7mm Cob LED. I then added an aluminium heatsink with a 16mm tube 150mm long. I will make four of these to place close to the 100x objective.

Pentax K-1 Kolari Vision modified full spectrum with EL-NIKKOR 80mm lens and extension tubes. Schott S8612 (2mm) and Hoya U360 (2mm). ISO 100 120 seconds at F11. Seems like ages since I had time to shoot and post here. Thanks for looking, Doug A

Are there any Epi-Illumination systems that work with M42 x1mm pitch extension tubes please ?

60x magnification of the Green Jewel Beetle shell. I would like to say thank you to the forum members for their help & encouragement in this endeavour to see the structure of the beetles shell that gives it its iridescence. Ulf has been a great help with finding suitable objectives on ebay for me & his kind donation of a pair of linear actuators that can be manually turned at 0.00125mm or it has 200 divisions per rotation at 1.25um. This has allowed me to get 53 stacked images. I think I will need a scanning electron microscope, perhaps in another life !

Green Jewel Beetle with 20x Objective a big improvement from the little Canon 20x f3.5. I have changed the macro setup yet again looking for precision & stability, this is just OK for 20x magnification. Only slight movement when moving the next step in the stack which is about 0.01mm, guessing 43 steps in just under half a millimetre. This is the very limit of fine adjustment with these macro rails used here. I have a 60x objective coming & a fine 0.001mm step linear rail coming too. I will be having fun over Christmas learning & making a suitable setup for 60x macro.

I am glad that I persisted. Thanks for your help & encouragement on this forum. Still getting the shakes out of the system & very fine adjustment. The 10x microscope objective has preformed very well. This is a 1mm wide crop of the Green Jewel Beetle's shell. Only the centre strip is stacked, it was 12 stacks over about 0.1mm depth. The magenta piece seems to be dust ?

The Green Iridescent Jewel Beetle wants to see its audience & in UVIVF too. The beetle will go back into hibernation till I get a 60x objective setup. Here are two head shots, one in visible light & one in UVIVF. Sorry the UVIVF is a bit primitive, but so am I, I did my best to clean up a messy background. They say you can make a piece of coal fluoresce given enough UV light !

I think I have reached the limit, with this macro rail, camera & lens. 20x macro is demanding, 20mp Sigma fp, Canon 20mm f3.5 on 430mm tubes & the Nisi macro rail, have done their service admirably, for single shots. There is just too much flexing & vibrations in the system for photo stacking. A much sturdier & refined system is needed if I want to see the structure of 'Structural Colour', I think. Here is my latest photo with the set-up I have, it is a single shot of a steel ruler showing a 1mm division. It shows a lot of dirt particles, that aren't apparent to the eye.

Green Iridescent Jewel Beetle's Shell at over 20x Magnification. I added some baffles into a long extension tube to cut some flaring. When I re-assembled the tubes I accidently added the remaining few extensions I had & now the tube is 430mm long ! Getting a bit out of hand, but it works ? Canon 20mm f3.5 Macro Bellow Lens.....the little big lens that can ! Green Iridescent Beetle at over 20x Magnification. The picture is of a 1.5mm x 1mm section of its shell. 19 stacks in Zerene Stacker with DMap.

I have a Small Dilemma 20x or 2mm. I can now do macro down to 20x, that is 1.8mm on a full frame sensor. But 2mm on the sensor would make scaling measurements on the image easier. Which do I chose ?

As well as my journey with UV LED lights I have been making a macro rail set-up that suits me & is stable. The first photo is of the Macro Rail set-up at present, it can be used horizontal or vertical. Next photos are of an expired 'Green Jewel Beetle' from Sulawesi Island, the botanists call it Chrysochroa Fulminans. I purchased this beetle for its iridescence & my interest in 'Structural Colour'. The camera is a standard Sigma fp with a Canon MP-E65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro lens. Simple processing by me & Topaz AI Sharpen & adding text in Irfanview & resizing for the web took its toll in the photo, so I also took a crop from the original DNG to see the 'Structural Colour' surface better. I have ordered a 10x microscope objective to see if I can see the structure any better ? The Macro Rail set-up at present (& one of my messy desks).. Green Jewel Beetle 1:1 full frame. Green Jewel Beetle 5:1 Green Jewel Beetle 5:1, 100% crop from the centre Green Jewel Beetle 5:1, 100% crop from the centre of the original DNG file. I think we can see the fine structure best with the individual colours diffracted from the surface ?

Adaptalux is offering a new unit on Kickstarter. It uses the same lighting arms as their studio unit. One of the packages has 365nm UV arms for UVIVF. I love my Nemo lights, but the Adaptalux would be so much easier to position. I'll probably pledge for a set. Thanks, Doug A

I like the fan shaped round reflector. No plastic diffuser to filter out UV. Price is great. Not a fan of the battery arrangement. Don't some of the Godox work well for UV? Anyone think this one has potential? https://www.dpreview.com/news/3602160276/godox-s-lux-senior-is-a-larger-more-powerful-flash-with-a-retro-inspired-design Thanks, Doug A

First a UVC warning - UVC is dangerous. The author does not recommend trying to replicate these experiments without knowledge and use of the proper safety equipment and procedures. This thread will cover information about an experiment I'm doing which is at an early stage. With my UV microscope I've been using it at 365nm and 313nm and it has been fine with those wavelengths. When I built it, I made sure components were used which would be usable down to 250nm, and perhaps even a little lower. However at that time, I didn't have a suitable light source, and my filtering and even camera choice made any experiments down at 254nm impractical to attempt. A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with a couple of folks on here, to try and get some advice with regards to a UVC LED source I was thinking of buying. I was steered away from my original idea, and towards trying a 3W UVC lamp as it was potentially small enough to use with my microscope. Thanks to Andy and David for taking the time to discuss things with me. The aim of this thread is to provide a bit of an update to what came of those discussions, and share some very early results of UVC microscopy at 254nm. The light source is a 3W low pressure mercury lamp source from China over ebay, cost about 8USD. I ended up mounting this in a spare Olympus lamp holder I had, after removing the internal glass lens and IR blocking filters. As result the 3W lamp was used as is, no collimating, no filtering, no anything. The camera I used was a MaxMax monchrome converted Nikon d850 with a fused silica window. I have used this before for UVC photography so know it is sensitive that far down. Filter was a 254nm one from a Sirchie forensics cameras. Again I have used this before for UVC photography. Some images of the setup etc. First, the lamp spectrum, at a distance of 10cm from the side of the lamp. The microscope with the lamp in place and switched on. And a first sample image using the diatom slide (fused silica/quartz for the slide and coverslip) using a 10x Zeiss Ultrafluar objective. I also got an image with a Schott WG305 2mm thick filter in place, the idea being to let through everything which isn't UVC (i.e. leakage from the 254nm filter). Looking at the RAW files for both images, I reckon about 90% of the image above is from the UVC and 10% of contribution of other wavelengths. This just goes to show how insensitive the camera is down there. This is very, very early days, and the method presents some very extreme challenges (in addition to safety). I need a way of focusing and collimating the light source better, as I am losing a lot at the moment. I need another 254nm filter to trying and better isolate that region. As with my 313nm work, I'd probably stack them together for better blocking. Live view focusing is currently not possible with the camera, as there is just so little sensitivity, so focusing is guesswork and trial and error. The image above was 30s at ISO1000, so it is not a fast process. I've got some 265nm LEDs on the way, so will check against the 3W low pressure mercury lamp to see how much light they are producing - maybe they will be better. Personally, I doubt they will be better, but only testing will tell. This is a bit of an unfunded side project for me, more scientific curiosity to see if it can be done than anything else (after all, the initial UV microscopy pioneers back in the late 1900s and early 20th century were doing this with plate cameras), and will update as and when I have new data/images to share. And again - just to emphasize, this is UVC work, do not try this at home.......

Hi Everyone, my first post on this forum, thanks for all your posts that have been very inspiring and special mention to Iggy and Enrico for many tips on camera and lenses that I ended up using. I am a biologist working on butterfly genetics and my team got interested in the study of UVA-iridescence, we published that work here: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109255118 (this article will be open-access shortly, in the mean time you can browse the main findings here : https://twitter.com/evolvwing/status/1480660574614740994 ) At that time I was happy enough with a reverse-mount El-Nikkor 50mm mounted on belows, and also used a Nikon CFI Plan Fluor ELWD 20x 0.45 DIC L Ph1 DM at some point. I now managed to put my hands on a Mitutoyo M Plan Apo NUV 20× / 0.42, and I was very impressed by the Working Distance and transmission for my specimens. I have not tried it with stacking yet, and should get more tonal range with better light sources, but this is very satisfactory already. I was also very happy to see no vignetting using the El-Nikkor 105mm f/5.6 as a stacking lens, although of course you would need a longer lens if you use sensors larger than the Lumix micro4/3 format. Dimensions : each scale on the image has a vertical width of 80 um. Note: careful on eBay, most items sold as Mitutoyo M Plan Apo NUV 20× appear to be counterfeit. I have a certificate on authenticity on mine, and I cannot comment on whether the imitations are decent for this purpose. Arnaud Diagram legend # Lens unit "Micro-UV" 1 Rubber End Caps 32mm(1 1/4-inch) ID Vinyl Round uxcell / Amazon 2 Mitutoyo M Plan Apo NUV 20× / 0.42 ebay 3 SM1A27 Adapter with External SM1 Threads and Internal M26 x 0.706 Threads Thorlabs 4 SM1 female to M28.5x0.6 male thread adapter rafcamera / ebay 5 U Filter (Venus and Ultraviolet) - 1.25" Baader Planetarium hidden / 6 Baader Double T-Filter Holder 1.25" Adapter # T2-31 Agena Astro 7 Female to Female Double Dual Inner Thread M42 and M42 mm Lens Ring Adapter Amazon 8 M34.5x0.5 male to M39x1 male thread adapter rafcamera / ebay hidden M39 39mm to M42 42mm Adapter for 39mm Enlarger Lens /42mm Focusing Helicoid ebay 9 EL-Nikkor 105mm f/5.6 ebay hidden M39 39mm to M42 42mm Adapter for 39mm Enlarger Lens /42mm Focusing Helicoid ebay 10 M42-M42 Focusing Helicoid Adapter Pixco 11 M42 Lens to M4/3 Focusing Helicoid Adapter Fotasy

Casswell, T. (2022) Gazania rigens (L.) Gaertn. (Asteraceae) Gazania. Flowers photographed in ultraviolet, infrared and visible light. Also with multispectral stack. LINK Location: 17 June 2022 Australia Collected from a street garden adjacent to the beachfront at Coolum Synonyms: several -- see Reference Other Common Names: Treasure flower Comment: This species is recognized as a weed in some areas of Australia, however it is widely used for a groundcover in suburban street gardens, median strips, traffic islands, etc in south eastern Queensland due to its hardy nature and prolific flowers in a variety of colours blooming nearly all year round. Two samples were taken and placed in a water filled vase approx 20 min after collection. Each was imaged using Baader U, Kolari U, Kolari Hot Mirror V2 & a generic 650nm infrared filter. All eight image runs were focus stacked. An attempt was made to combine infrared (R), visible (G) & UV (B) into a multispectral image (mantis shrimp vision?), which proved difficult due to the dynamic nature of the flower given its circumstances. Reference: 1. Wikipedia (18 June 2022) Gazania rigens. Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco, CA. Equipment: Converted Canon EOS R5 EL-Nikkor 105/5.6. Baader U, Kolari U, Kolari Hot Mirror V2 & a generic 650nm infrared filters Technique: UV, visible & infrared colour balanced using a white PTFE sheet with exposure dialled down to avoid any RGB channel clipping. Focus stacked using Helicon Focus 8. ISO100, f/11 for all shots. Multispectral - aligned using PT Gui with manually placed control points Yellowish White Sample: Visible light, t = 1/100s UV (Baader U), t = 5s UV (Kolari U), t = 5s (some highlight clipping) 650nm Infrared, t = 1/80s Multispectral using the Kolari U for UV (blue channel) Yellow Sample: Visible light, t = 1/80s (slight overexposure) UV (Baader U), t = 8s UV (Kolari U), t = 8s 650nm Infrared, t = 1/80s

Speaking of taking pictures of Dandelions, do you guys know of any way to keep the dandelion open even after I pick it? Mine basically closed up completely like two hours after I tore it from the plant.