September 2025
I was looking forward to the Grove Park Carnival, but there were no trains to London from my local stations, and no trains from London to Grove Park. I was also looking forward to the Wimbledon Common Open Day, but it had to be cancelled because of the bad weather.
Kai and I noticed some small dark objects in slices of bread (not seeded). I thought they could be the start of mould, and Kai thought they were insects because she could see legs. The stereo microscope showed that we were both wrong, they were seeds that had been cut in half.
Seed in bread (2.4 mm)
I have always assumed that my LED ring-light would be no use with the Olympus 20 mm and 38 mm Auto Macro lenses because it would only shine light in a ring around a specimen, not onto it, but I decided to test it today. The 20 mm Zuiko Auto-Macro Lens seemed the best choice, and I started by attaching it to my Telescopic Auto Tube, only to discover that I could not stop it down. So I switched to the Auto Bellows, which has a lever to close down the automatic iris. I set the lens to f/4, and tried to clamp the LED ring-light on to the rubber focusing ring. At first it did not fit, because the ring-light fouled the front standard of the bellows, but a 14 mm Auto Extension Tube fixed that problem. With the Auto Bellows attached to my copying stand, a quick test showed that the light did illuminate a specimen about 20 mm from the front of the lens. So I set up my butchered BHT stand so that I could adjust the focus in small steps and my Chuo goniometers so that I could tilt the specimen to the best angle.
LED ring-light on Zuiko Auto-Macro 20 mm f/2
I used the lens at f/4 and took 16 images at 0.05 mm steps, for combining in Zerene Stacker PMax. I adjusted levels and brightness in Photoshop Elements 15.
August 2025
On Saturday 2nd August I took a few items to sell at Microscopium in Letchworth, and made enough to cover the cost of my train ticket. There were fewer sellers and not as many interesting items as usual, but it was a good opportunity to catch up with old friends.
On Saturday 9th August, I went on the Quekett excursion to Warnham Local Nature Reserve on the outskirts of Horsham. The specimens that we found in the samples included diatoms, desmids, rotifers, ciliates (including peritrichs), copepods, Cladocera, ostracods, mayfly nymphs, mites, gastrotrichs, testate amoebae, a leech, green hydra (Hydra viridissima) and algae.
Neil Henry sampling the Shelley pond
I went to the Microscopy Weekend at Down House on Saturday 16th to take photographs and help out. They were short of volunteers for Sunday 17th, so I went again, this time with my Olympus SZ4045 stereo microscope.
Olympus SZ4045 stereo microscope with 144-LED ring-light
I was based in the garden laboratory, and my specimens included flowers, fern sori, hollyhock seeds, poppy seed heads, lichen on small twigs, and a small mouldy apple, all collected from the garden. The poppy seeds looked interesting at maximum magnification under the stereo, so I took a seed head home to photograph. For the seed head, I used my shadowless illuminator based on an inverted LED ring-light and a white pudding basin, and this helped to illuminate the internal structure.
Seed head of a poppy (with shadowless illuminator)
For the poppy seeds, I used my Olympus BHT with a BH-RLA Brightfield/Darkfield Reflected Light Illuminator (set for darkfield), a Neo 5× objective and an FK 2.5× photo eyepiece. The seeds are very dark, and even with the lighting on maximum the image in EOS Utility on my computer screen was too dark to focus. I could just see enough through the eyepieces to focus, and I took 41 images at 0.020 mm steps for combining in Zerene Stacker (PMax). I had to adjust levels and brightness in Photoshop Elements 15 to show the surface detail.
Poppy seeds (0.75 mm)
I have the original BH-LHM lamp house with a 6V 15W tungsten bulb, an alternative retroDIODE LED illuminator, and a BH2-MLSH lamp house with a 12V 50W tungsten halogen bulb, but none of them provide enough light for a dark specimen with reflected darkfield illumination.
We have recently planted some Portuguese laurels (Prunus lusitanica) in our back garden, and this was one of the species that Chris Thomas was using to demonstrate making leaf peels in Vida Rosa UV Resin. Chris talked me through the process, and I took the slide home to label it and photograph it. The peel is colourless so it was not easy to make it show up in a photo, but I found that diffuse illumination worked when the slide was raised above a black background.
Leaf peel of Portuguese laurel
To show the detail in the leaf peel, I used normal transmitted illumination on my BHT, with a 40× SPlan objective and a 2.5× NFK LD photo eyepiece. The peel was not flat, and I needed to take 34 images at .001 mm steps to get enough depth of field.
Leaf peel of Portuguese laurel (40× objective)
July 2025
Caterpillars of the peacock butterfly (Aglais io) used to be a familiar sight on stinging nettles (Urtica dioica), but I have not seen any for several years. These were feasting on nettles on the roadside verge behind our garden. I used my Canon EOS 600D with the EF-S 18–55 zoom lens.
Peacock caterpillars on stinging nettles
June 2025
On Saturday 21st June, I went on the Quekett excursion to Keston ponds. I went collecting with Nigel Ashby, and his specimens included copepods, cladocerans, ciliates, flagellates, desmids, bryozoans and rotifers.
Nigel Ashby collecting
May 2025
I went to the Natural History Museum for the “Stained sections“ gossip meeting and took some slides that I had acquired at Club meetings since joining the Quekett in 2011, including ones made by Quekett members Eric Impey, Ernie Ives, Colin Kirk, Eric Marson (NBS), Mike Smith and John Wells (Biosil), some axolotl sections described as “probably by Robin Wacker”, and some commercial slides sold by Gerrard and Philip Harris. I also took some histology slides from Lambeth Hospital that I bought from Clarkson’s in High Holborn in 1963 when I was looking for my first microscope. I tried to include some unusual specimens, including grasshopper, guppy, ostrich, potato fungal rot, slime mould and swan mussel.
Stained sections
Stained sections
Stained sections
Later in the month, I went to Chinbrook Meadows for the event organised by the Friends as part of London Rivers Week. There is no electricity, so I borrowed my wife’s powerbank so that I could use an LED ring-light with my Olympus SZ4045 stereomicroscope. We found lots of specimens in the ponds in the new wetlands area, and also showed some of the plants from the banks of the ponds under microscopes. Back home, I photographed similar specimens to include in the meeting report. For the plants I used my Canon EOS 600D with a 60 mm f/2.8 EF-S macro lens, and for the hairs I used a 4× Olympus SPlan objective and an NFK 2.5 L photo eyepiece on my BHT.
Cleavers (Galium aparine) and its hooked leaf hairs
(the hooked hairs are about 0.13 mm long)
Wall barley (Hordeum murinum) spike and its barbed awns (hairs)
(the awns are about 0.2 mm diameter)
One youngster asked us to identify an insect, and it was a ladybird larva. I couldn’t get a good photo of it, so when I got home I found a similar larva on our climbing rose and photographed it using my Canon 60 mm f/2.8 EF-S macro lens.
Ladybird larva (9 mm long)
March 2025
For the Zoom gossip meeting “Your go-to equipment”, I showed the LED ring-light that I use with my stereomicroscope and with macro lenses, and explained how I produce shadowless and dark-ground illumination.
Later in the month I went to the Quekett Spring Sale near Reading. It is a long trip by public transport, about 3½ hours, but I managed to sell a few items. I only bought one item, a Carl Zeiss C5× eyepiece, that I intend to try out with a T-mount microscope adapter.
February 2025
Joan Bingley and I took stereomicroscopes and specimens to the “Life Under a Microscope” session of the Wimbledon Common Nature Club. It is run by Auriel Glanville and her assistants (Jen Long, Luci Teuma and Alexander and Oliver Mallett) and welcomes children from 6–14 years old to come and discover the world of nature on the Common. They meet for 2 hours each month in the Information Centre, the same venue as used by Quekett members on excursions, the Weekend of Nature and the Open Day. I took my Olympus SZ4045 stereomicroscope with an LED ring-light, and a small and simple stereomicroscope.
Families with my stereomicroscopes
Joan brought a small Brunel stereomicroscope with transmitted and reflected light, and an old Orion S420 with a torch as a light source.
Joan Bingley’s stereomicroscopes
The specimens that the children brought back from their walk were mostly lichens, but they also brought back holly leaves and bramble stems. I photographed these later to include in the meeting report.
Holly leaf spines
Bramble thorns
Later in the month, I went to the workshop on stains and staining in the Natural History Museum (led by Gordon Brown) and the Home Counties Meeting in Cobham (organised by Joan Bingley). My participation was limited to taking photographs and notes for meeting reports on the Quekett website.
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