Two individual butterfly wing scales

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Charles Krebs
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Two individual butterfly wing scales

Post by Charles Krebs »

Image

Well I'm back. Spent a couple weeks in southern Louisiana eating crawfish, listening to zydeco, and photographing birds. My microscope table needs a good spring cleaning and organizing, but I had to take a few pictures first, so I looked at some butterfly wings.

Here are two individual scales photographed with a 40X using brightfield illumination.

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piotr
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Post by piotr »

Hi Charlie, good to see you back :-)

Fascinating subject, indeed! Are the butterfly wing scales a birefringent subject?
Piotr

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micron
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Post by micron »

Very nice images Charlie - how do you get the background so white?

All the best,
Ron

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Ron... I set the "white" eyedropper in "levels" in Photoshop to (RGB) 245/245/245 and click on the white area of a brightfield photo. This eliminates any color casts and brings the whites up to just below complete "washout" (which would be 255/255/255).

Piotr... I'm not sure if some of these scales are "birefringent". Certainly there are some scales that have intense colors if light hits them at certain angles, but look very "plain" or dark when illuminated from another angle. (Just like some hummingbird feathers). I've always thought of this as iridescence.

lacerta
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Post by lacerta »

Welcome back Charlie ! Great image.
George

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piotr
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Post by piotr »

Charlie, thank you for the explanation. I wondered if any of the insect scales are a good subject for observation in polarized light.
Piotr

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GreenLarry
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Post by GreenLarry »

Charles Krebs wrote:Ron... I set the "white" eyedropper in "levels" in Photoshop to (RGB) 245/245/245 and click on the white area of a brightfield photo. This eliminates any color casts and brings the whites up to just below complete "washout" (which would be 255/255/255).
How do you enter the figures? I went into levels, set to RGB, and tried to enter the 3 sets of 245, but the second figure has to be a number bewteen 0.10 and 9.9.
Which eyedropper do you click on, there are 3.

Charles Krebs
Posts: 1200
Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2004 10:50 am
Location: Issaquah, WA USA

Post by Charles Krebs »

Larry,

If you go to "levels" in Photoshop, in addition to the sliders you will see three eyedroppers in the lower right. If you double click on them a dialog box opens up and allows you to set the RGB value you want for that eyedropper. By default the "white" eyedropper is set for 255/255/255. It can be very useful to put in values that suit particular subjects. Here I used 245/245/245, but the subjects are quite dark so it worked out OK. These values might be too high if you have subjects that do not have as much contrast with the background.

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GreenLarry
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Post by GreenLarry »

Thanks for that, i got it now! :D

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