It looks like there are no epidermal cells near the head, the hypodermal cells appear to have extended beyond the epidermis. I donât see any dead nor damaged epidermal cells though
2 Likes
-https://images2.imgbox.com/df/5b/FHF7ntSl_o.jpg
Bag seed, experimenting with Helicon Focus 8 to stack the images. Super fast program, makes the workflow very simple, though doesnât work as well for 2000x trichome shots.
5 Likes
I actually recently bought one of these and Iâm very happy with it for my needs to view trichomes as well as looking for these guys Hypoaspis miles (Stratiolaelaps scimitus) Soil-Dwelling Predatory Mite â NaturesGoodGuys
In my soil to stop fungus gnats plus I inspected the last batch of nematodes which showed about 60% moving on my samples before adding them to soil. As well as looking at leaves if I feel like there may be a bug issue.
2 Likes
Hope you enjoy it! Have you taken any pictures or videos yet or do you just use it for live inspection so far?
1 Like
Make your own nematode grenades And boost your 60%
I would freak out watching that on video : )
2 Likes
Mostly just live inspections. Taken a few pics for seeing how itâs done but for me itâs about as easy to take a pic of the screen on my phone.
Very cool but I need very few and only once when some stored soil in plastic 30 gal trash can was really populated with them. All better now and the predators keeping it clean.
6 Likes
if you donât mind, what are these images created with?
regards,
Hereâs the current process using an Andonstar AD249S-M microscope with the âDâ lens, Fiji (ImageJ) freeware miscroscopy image tool from the NIH, and Photopea (photoshop clone online).
The microscope can take picture and video. The picture quality is terrible. So I take videos of these trichome subjects that are around 6 seconds long. I save the video file to a microSD and transfer to my PC, then play them using VLC. I hold down shift+S in VLC to extract individual frames automatically to a folder. I usually use around 48 images per video file.
Using Fiji, I import the 48 extracted images as an image sequence. They are all nearly identical except each one has random grainy noise. We donât want that. I want the average of all 48 images so that the noise is sorta cancelled out. Now, these images arenât aligned well because everything moves a tiny bit at 2000x, so we first align or âregisterâ the image sequence. Once thatâs done, I export the image sequence as a single solo image (called a Z-projection in Fiji) that takes into account the good information from each image, and rejecting the bad info.
I do this entire process for each focal distance I shoot of each trichome. I use anywhere from 4-20+ focal distances for each trichome shot. The most recent image was 23 different images (each of those 23 is comprised of ~48 combined images put through the process towards a z-projection).
And also to see what Iâm doing in your mind, Iâm simply taking a 6 second video with the remote, then adjusting the focus dial by like 3 degrees of rotation, then I take another video, repeat, repeat, repeat, until I have âslicesâ of perfect focus âthroughâ the entire trichome subject. Each has a different focal distance. Itâs just manual focus bracketing using a dial between video takes.
Then I take those 23 different images (each at a different focal distance) and align/register that stack too using Fiji. I output this as an image sequence though, not a z-projection because I want the layers.
I import all 23 layers into Photopea, and then manually edit the layers to delete blurry data and keep sharp data. Itâs like painting in reverse.
Finally I flatten that stack to a single image, color/tone/levels, export as JPG.
7 Likes
Pic is as cool as Ritchie Kotzens 1st album, âFever Dreamâ!!!
2 Likes
Haha love it!
Iâm not however loving my last few focus stack attempts with Helicon 8. It seems to give the images too much of that HDR look and doesnât do a great job (at all) of registering photos with warped/skewed changes to the trichome.
Under the bright lights, the trichome will move out of focus on me within seconds, so each set of image sequences need to be registered for: rotation, scale, skew, and non-linear changes such as the trichome head moving bu the stalk not moving. This all boils down to getting either a crisp image or a âdreamyâ image. I think Iâm going to stick with the slow process of Fiji for now where each image takes around 2 hours to shoot and produce in post (Helicon provides a workflow that gets it done in like 15 mins).
5 Likes
I appreciate all your valuable time and effort for us
They are spectacular : )
2 Likes
-https://images2.imgbox.com/27/86/4t4RnZM8_o.jpg
Fire starter! Brothers Grimm âDurban Nightsâ day 58F.
A little dark - I need to pump the exposure a bit before recording video. Iâm back to using Fiji but found a new plugin to handle the stack registration. Hoping for better and better quality!
9 Likes
awesome pic dude, your always dropping beauties brother.
very nice âŚ
1 Like
From what I know about photoshop, you can add exposure/light but it is hard to take it out once it is in there.
In other words too much light is very hard to fix but too little light can be fix pretty easily.
Now I am talking washed out pics here, good lighting is not an issue but over exposure is.
You seem to know your shit, so I donât mean to be overbearing here, just food for thought is all.
Keep up the good work, I love what you are doing.
BTW, I do not stack images, so I may be way off base here.
Like I said you seem to have things under control, just my 2 cents here.
Much love
shag
3 Likes
Thanks @shag!
No worries I really enjoy and appreciate the input! Youâre totally spot-on with your take on exposure and handling in post via PS. Itâs got me thinking and planning on how to improve the workflow.
The Andonstar microscope Iâm using has a built-in âexposureâ function. It also has a built-in dimming function on the lights. But it gets weird - the software seems to also auto-level the ISO behind the scenes, which can really affect image quality. I donât have control over ISO w/ video, and I would think that the âexposureâ function is essentially an ISO adjustment, but the way this unit auto-levels itself after Iâve set up the shots is wacky and it changes between focus positions too! Hard to complain for the price though.
So Iâm pulling on two levers (software exposure and hardware light intensity) and trying to ensure resultant ISO (that I canât touch) is not contributing to noise/grain to the point that it shows in the final image.
/Brainstorming/
To reduce ISO the most, I increase light intensity the most. That will tend to blow-out the highlights and reflections and by quite a bit. Pulling âexposureâ down brings the highlights in check but that crushes the darker details. Dimming the lights and increasing exposure helps to balance the highlights with dark detail but I lose some crispness and I see higher noise (assuming itâs that darn ISO auto-leveling without my consent!)
If I werenât so lazy I might run the same focus stop at multiple exposure levels and merge the details into a single image (for each stop). Iâm super envious of RAW filetypes here because Iâm working with compressed video files from the start, sending those to TIFF files and working things up as rasterized images.
Very cool OG image!!! Love it! That was a really cool shot, the bubbles in the caps were amazing!
-https://images2.imgbox.com/07/7c/qMFRE28n_o.jpg
8 Likes
@LD50
I think that I read in this thread that you poked something into one of the trichome heads,? but I couldnât find it to quote⌠From your experience playing around with them; If a person had the proper equipment, do you think it would be possible to inject something into the trichome head?
My theory is that the different terpenes that are in the trichome will help to arrange different CBDâs, CBNâs and such as the resin matures. I was thinking that perhaps a person could inject a different terpene from what the plant usually produces into the trichome and see if this changes the type of CBDs that develop in those trichomes compared to the regular ones elsewhere on the plant. That is of course, if it is possible to test isolated trichomes in such a way.
1 Like