Digital Microscopy = Blurg.

Hello, Microscopy blog!

I'm sorry I haven't written in you in a long time. This has been a crazy year. And I don't mind telling you that it has been crazy in an awful way. 2008? Not my favorite year.

How've you been? Oh, is that baby spider still the latest post? I see...

Well how about this: A review of that microscope I was so excited about. Remember that? Good times! Turns out it wsn't that great. I mean, it worked, but it wasn't worth the $300. It didn't have any sort of fine-focus. The digital output was for file transfer only. No live imaging on the PC. The biggest drawback, though, was the photo capture feature. I know, right? The single function for which I bought the thing.

The capture button was located below the LCD viewscreen. The viewscreen itself was pretty shoddy, and had a native resolution far below that of the actual images so it was difficult to tell whether the subject was in focus or not. Most of the time I had to pop the .jpgs over to the computer to see whether they turned out. Worse, actually pressing the capture button would shake the whole microscope to the point that in-focus photography was an exercise in frustration. It was a major annoyance at 40x, but at 400x it was awful. It didn't help that the scope itself weighed so little. (Although some may say that that's a good thing.) A week of valiant effort convinced me to return the microscope to Amazon.

You know, if I found this thing for about $100, it might be okay. But $300 is far more than it's worth, in my opinion. Below are some of the better pictures. I don't even know how many I threw out. A lot.


The molted exoskeleton of an aphid (so it's partially inside-out) at 40x.

The same guy at 100x.

...and at 400x. This is its leg. You can see it gets hard to focus.

Here's the wing of... something. I forgot to write it down. (It's been a while since I took these.) 40x

100x

400x

(abandoned) spider web at 40x

100x

400x. I love that you can see the "glue" droplets along its length.

And lastly, Moth scales.
@40x

@100x

and @400x

Man, that's a lot of stuff.

Last week I walked down the stairwell and saw what looked like spotty mold on the ceiling. I blew on it and every little dot immediately dropped from the ceiling and then started climbing back up a line of web. They were little baby spiderlings. I collected a few hundred and let them all go on my balcony, hoping they'd stick around and call me "Dad." But first I stuck them under the microscope. Here's one of them at 40x. They're like baby humans in that they're chubby and disproportionate, with big shiny eyes, and they eat bugs. I used to grab handfuls of these little yellow guys to freak out my friend Augie when I was in the 4th grade.

Silverfish

I'm anxiously checking the UPS site to track my microscope. It should be here next week.
In the mean time, I'll post another drawing.

This weekend I found a very unwelcome visitor in my apartment building. I live near Greenlake in Seattle. The whole neighborhood is actually a swampy lake that was filled in so people could live there. But it's still a swamp. As such, the ground floor of our building is perfectly pleasant for moisture-loving silverfish. I love bugs, but silverfish are goddamned disgusting.


Until, that is, you stick them under a microscope. Seems backward, doesn't it? But really he was kinda cute. I still hucked him out the window when I was done drawing him though. My apartment is littered with drawings and paper and books, which is silverfish food.

Lepisma saccharina

Psyllobora borealis

'K. Introduction out of the way, it's time for pictures.

This is one of several beetles I grabbed off of a blackberry leaf last summer. A very small member of the Ladybug family, I only today bothered to identify it as Psyllobora borealis. Very similar to P. vigintimaculata, but for a few small differences in markings.

Also, they're totally cute and tiny!

Also also, look how my handwriting is worse than a 6-year-old's. Sad! Whatever. I'm a cartoonist, not a.... something that has good handwriting.

So I grabbed a few leaves full of beetles and stuck them in the freezer to euthanize them. Turns out that I interrupted a little beetle-business. I felt kinda bad, but if I'm cock-blocking, at least I'm doing it in the interest of science.

Introduction!

Welcome the the Micro Adam: The Mighty Adam's blog devoted to his amateur microscopy. As I am a huge bug-nerd, most of what you'll see here will be entomological in nature, but I'm sure I'll post other things I find that are interesting.

I have on my table a stereo microscope that was a birthday gift from my wife in 2007.
It's capable of 20 and 40x magnification.

Since last summer I've caught and watched (and sometimes killed.* Sue me.) a bunch of insects n' spiders. I decided to start doodling them in my sketchbook. They're not medically accurate drawings, but it's nerdy and fun.

As an early birthday gift, I recently ordered a more powerful microscope with a digital output. Anticipating its arrival, I started this blog. Expect many beautiful pics of bug feet and beetle poop.


*I've also eaten several, usually inadvertently. Usually. And ants taste metallic.