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Microscopy With A Film Scanner
NickFitz writes "If you've got a film scanner lying around, this site shows you how to use it as a microscope. "Your monitor displays images at about 70-90 dpi, so taking the example of my Mac monitor at about 75 dpi, we get a magnification of 4000/75 which is about x53. It's not a lot and isn't going to show the likes of blood cells, but it should give an interesting view of small transparent objects." Did you know that bees wings are hairy?"
53x? I have an Intel QX3 USB microscope which goes to 200x. In the name of science (yeah right), I used it to look at a Biore strip fresh from my nose. I didn't clean my nose for a while in preparation for this advancement of knowledge and the results are worth it.
Trolling is a art,
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I hate it when she leaves it to me to wash the scanner glass though!
sPh
Want photographs? You can get surprisingly good results by simply holding a digital camera flush to the eyepiece. I have a few of these I did for fun here.
Have fun.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
People have been using scanners in this way for image forensics for years. We also used this method to get around image mosaicing large microscopy fields several years ago in an undergraduate biology class I took. (amazing what students come up with to avoid work) Now of course image mosaicing software is available to get around this problem, but it's good to see science stuff like this get out to the main stream. Perhaps this will also make it into a few junior high and high school classes as a cool exercise.
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Since this seems like the type of site that will be slashdotted, I cached a copy of the bee wing image. Enjoy!
Why do I h8 apple?
.. has also been done, albeit with a lesser degree of success. I believe it appears in the Annals of Improbably Research collected book.
The wings are not the hairiest thing on a bee.
True, but have you ever tried to spread those little legs?
Trolling is a art,
Or buy the Intel computer micriscope for 1/10th the price of a really bad shape used film scanner and get better results.
This is great if you have the hyper-expensive device...otherwise buy the intel microscope and call it done with better images.
Good point. If every school in the country bought an old film scanner cheap, that would, uh... drive up the price of second hand film scanners. The problem is that "know[ing] the right people". Every school has to know an independent right person.
It's like the regular Slashdot article on "How to build a reusable orbital launch vehicle for $12.75" based on parts bought on eBay. Sure, that's how you did it. Now that the cat's out of the bag, I'll be bidding against every excitable teen 1337 h4x0r with mommy's credit card.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
These things cost like $500 new at the cheapest. I think that even used you would still be better off just buying a cheap microscope that gets 400x like this one for $134.
So, sure it's all big and clever to use a scanner as a microscope, but is it really that big and clever to pull the wing off a bee?
I'm shocked! This sort of behaviour should not be promoted on Slashdot!!!!
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
ALRIGHT
For all of you who didn't pick this up, I'm talking about a FREE scanner. Like one from the back closet, or one that a business DONATES. Businesses do this all the time for tax write-offs. I hope this helps to end the stream of -well-if-every-school-starts-buying-these- comments.
Hooking up equipment you already have will save money.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Digital Dragonflies has been around for many years and is the best example of scanning large insects I have ever seen.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
but it's been a long time since anyone asked me....Thanks for visiting the 9th Grade Biology Trivia (tm) store....
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
For years I've used a scanner as a cheap way to
document mods to PCB's (printed circuit boards, not
Polychlorinated Biphenyls). Even the tiny labels
that sometimes appear on 0603 resistors are
readable, and it documents what's there, rather
than what I _think_ is there.
However: some scanners have better depth of field
than others. The ones which sweep a mirror under
the document, rather than sweeping the sensors
themselves, seem to have better depth of field.
Anybody ever attempt to hack their scanner into a camera? By disabling/removing the light source, placing a bit of frosted glass in the object plane and a lens in front, I would bet that one could make a linear-array camera. Image quality might suck, but it would be quite cool, nonetheless.
I see old flatbed scanners at garage sales. As soon as I find one for $5, I might try to make a large format linear camera from the thing. I already have some lenses (from old dismantled photocopiers) that will be perfect for projecting an image onto a 8.5 x 11 "film" plane of the scanner.
Any other scanner/camera hackers out there???
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Did you know that bees wings are hairy?
So are female German shot putters. And let me tell you I didn't have to wrestle one on to my scanner to find that out.
Cynicism is the natural defence of the romantic.
I recently discovered that you can create a good telescope with some standard camera lens and a webcam. Just take of its lens (was easy with mine) and place it behind the lens at the proper distance and you get some magnification. It gives you some extra magnification compared to a 35 mm film because the sensor is much smaller. With a 500 mm lens, the moon was too big to fit on the computer screen! I also tried to photograph some ants in the back garden from the kitchen table, but the little animals didn't want to stand quiet.
Image quality might suck because most scanners have lighting systems that are appreciably brighter than the image projected by a lens. So the image might be dark. Moreover, the coupling of the imaging lens' projected image into the scanner optics would be imperfect and so the center of the image would probably be far brighter than the edges. Finally, the hacked scanner-camera would only work on motionless objects -- any movement during the long scanning time would create interesting artifacts.
But it would be quite cool because you would have an umpteen megapixel camera. A 300 dpi flatbed would create an 8.4 megapixel image and a 600 dpi flatbed would provide a 33.6 megapixel image. A 4000 dpi slide scanner would lead to about a 21 megapixel camera.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
So I was at this red light in a van with a bunch of friends. There was a yuppie-looking cool dude in front of us, on a motorcycle. He had a booth tan and spiky hair, and a booth-tanned halter-topped girlfriend sitting on the back.
Hey, that's ok. That's great for him, in fact! Motorcycles are good, they're fun! But his license plate said:
"IAMFLY"
as in "I'm fly, baby", "I'm phat", "look at me, I am the stuff".
On a motorcycle license plate??? I mean, you're so incredibly at the mercy of other motorists when you're on a motorcycle, you'd think he'd try to be a little less cocky, maybe with a license plate like "HITHERE" or "NICECAR" or "PLZ!RUNOVERME".
So I rolled down the window, leaned out, and screamed at the top of my voice -- from a Ford Windstar minivan, at a crowded intersection, wearing a suit -- "I AM WINDSHIELD!!!!"
He looked back, all confused -- and then the light turned green, and his girlfriend poked him, and he turned around and sped off.
Anyways, the scanner glass and your story made me think of bugs and windshields and stuff.
Of course, a film scanner is nearly useless for teaching microscopy skills-- moving the slide on the stage, filters, focusing, etc. The image isn't terribly clear at the higher magnifications--as the scanner wasn't designed to image anything but 35mm slides, And woe to any individual who wants to look at a wet sample.
Allow me to recommend an article from Annals of Improbable Research, most easily available in one of their "Best Of" collections:
This wonderful article describes how to image down to the level of single atoms or even subatomic particles, using nothing more than an ordinary photocopier!Too bad the film-scanner folks missed this: could have saved themselves a lot of work.
Here's a cheaper way to get similar results. 1) Take a bee wing 2) Put it really close to your eye