MosheR wrote:
You don't go out and buy stuff just for the sake of owning more stuff, Gary, as so many on this forum who complain they don't really have the means to do so do. You see a challenge, determine what kind of equipment will help you overcome said challenge, mull it over, then purchase and, above all, UTILIZE it to its fullest.
The result, in this case, is simply one more truly amazing and eye popping photo. Keep 'em coming.
Mel, thanks ever so much for the kind words. I'm a DIY fellow whenever possible. I find that I learn more about what works and what does not, which is more important at times. I've been using (and will still use for lower magnifications) a $2.50 steel roller caster that I popped the bearing out of and set on top of the housing. I put a dab of Plasticine modeling clay on it to stick the pin-mounted specimen on and it provides orbiting with pitch and yaw. It's not fastened down so I manually place it "about" where it needs to go.
I set this orbiting stage on a $14 laboratory scissor jack to raise and lower it which is set on top of a $36 milling table which moves it all forward and back and left and right. All in all, a DIY solution for nearly every session for the past five years.
Using a 10X microscope objective posed new challenges for the field of view akin to looking at something closeup through a pinhole not being able to see the entire subject only to be made more difficult with a depth of field of 3.5 microns where everything is a blur except for a small area of focus. Attached is the first of the 415 images taken in the stack to show what I see on the viewfinder screen of the camera.