Colorfully magnified

October 12, 2010 12:30 PM

A few small things, seen up close.
posted by nomadicink (34 comments total)

Beautiful. Except for the false-color.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:32 PM on October 12, 2010

Now I can see why head lice are so hard to get rid of.
posted by Joe Beese at 12:33 PM on October 12, 2010

The dust was pretty, but the hummingbird tongue unsettled me.

Did you have any favorites, nomadicink?
posted by dragonplayer at 12:35 PM on October 12, 2010

Anyone else's hair itching now?
posted by ntrifle at 12:38 PM on October 12, 2010

God, everything is disgusting up close.
posted by dead cousin ted at 12:38 PM on October 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

Looks like it's this book. I am so tempted to buy a copy...
posted by yeoz at 12:38 PM on October 12, 2010

It's bad enough I know what Hugh Laurie's nose pores look like. We need to quit this HD nonsense before this becomes the future. Yeesh.

Velcro is cool, though.
posted by phunniemee at 12:40 PM on October 12, 2010

The false colour was sort of disappointing and probably led a little bit to the "what the heck is that" disconnect I felt.

Still, doesn't make the images any less interesting and beautiful.
posted by addelburgh at 12:44 PM on October 12, 2010

I like the false color...
posted by reductiondesign at 12:47 PM on October 12, 2010

Did you have any favorites, nomadicink?

The ant, of course. You just KNOW it's thinking "Screw food, this baby is going to up the hell out of our internet connection!"

The clutch of butterfly eggs is a nice tweak of Alien.
posted by nomadicink at 12:48 PM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Beautiful. Except for being in the Daily Mail.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 12:51 PM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah not really sure about the false coloring. Why would you make cauliflower (or eyelashes!) green?
posted by shakespeherian at 12:54 PM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I was actually surprised how relatively little some of these had been magnified. The eyebrow only being magnified 50x surprised me.
posted by OmieWise at 12:57 PM on October 12, 2010

Why would you make cauliflower (or eyelashes!) green?

Looks cool and striking.
posted by nomadicink at 1:01 PM on October 12, 2010

Well, the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color, so things (night-vision, for example) often use green monochrome to allow us to see slightly more detail (dynamic range) in the image.
posted by teatime at 1:03 PM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

The clutch of butterfly eggs is a nice tweak of Alien.

You may enjoy these photos.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:03 PM on October 12, 2010 [5 favorites]

I like the rusty nail best.
posted by grubi at 1:10 PM on October 12, 2010

What may look like a filmmaker's vision of an apocalyptic world is actually a cigarette paper. The blue crystals are additives that keep the lit cigarette burning by producing oxygen

Beautiful to look at, but horrible to contemplate.
posted by three blind mice at 1:12 PM on October 12, 2010

For some reason these creeped me out. I'm off to scrub my eyebrows to get rid of all that dead skin!
posted by russmaxdesign at 1:13 PM on October 12, 2010

*understands "too close for comfort" now*
posted by Cranberry at 1:15 PM on October 12, 2010

I agree that the false color in the photographs is WAY overdone.

For an amateur such as myself, even the inexpensive USB microscopes are truly amazing.

Here are Old Hickory's eyes from a series 1950 twenty dollar bill.
posted by Tube at 1:28 PM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

Whoever does a book like this for food will have created an astoundingly successful diet book.
posted by crapmatic at 1:29 PM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

The wood or heathland ant holding a microchip in its toothed (serrated) mandibles

You're going to clarify that the ant's mandibles are serrated, but not what its plans are for the damn microchip?
posted by ook at 1:39 PM on October 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

Let's get small.
posted by punkfloyd at 1:42 PM on October 12, 2010

I am a fan of all sorts of imaging, but for those who like seeing tiny things up close but are turned off of false color scanning electron microscopy photos, you might enjoy high quality macro photography using visible light.

Electron microscopy is sometimes gone to well before it is needed for imaging of small objects. Compare the velcro photo in the post's link to this macro shot of velcro (scroll down).

Also, some how-tos:
General Macro Shooting Info
Extreme Macro Photography without a Macro Lens
While I prefer an actual macro lens, here is more on reversing lenses for macro photography.
posted by Muddler at 1:57 PM on October 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

Why would you make cauliflower (or eyelashes!) green?

the cauliflower looks like romanesque which IS green.
posted by Max Power at 2:19 PM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

It is the Romanesque. I love using photos of that guy in lectures on self-similarity. Great link; I never get tired of pictures of tiny things.
posted by monkeymadness at 4:20 PM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

The ant carrying the microchip is scary and adorable at the same time. My second favorite is the butterfly eggs on the raspberry leaf.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 6:25 PM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm going to have nightmares of the hummingbird tongue.
posted by Rarebit Fiend at 9:13 PM on October 12, 2010

I don't really care about the false coloring, I'm curious as to how they convinced an ant to carry a microchip under the hard vacuum of an electron microscope.
posted by lazenby at 1:28 AM on October 13, 2010

These are beautiful (I have no problem with pseudocolored SEM images, in fact, in a previous job I wrote software to pseudocolor SEM images). Just wanted to mention, there's NO WAY that the dust ball is at 22 million times magnification!

Most of the amazing SEM images you see (fly's eye, etc) are at about 100X magnification. Maximum magnification on a SEM is about 500000X - to get to 22 million you'd need an atomic force microsope, and you wouldn't be looking at dust mites....)

And - lazenby - I have to assume the ant is dead and this is a "nature morte" ...
posted by crazy_yeti at 6:37 AM on October 13, 2010

Very cool. Thanks for the post.
posted by MarshallPoe at 7:27 AM on October 13, 2010

I liked this very much. It's nice to see some images that aren't just bug heads.

shakespeherian, those butterfly eggs were amazing!
posted by obol at 8:42 AM on October 13, 2010

It doesn't feel great to know that my eyelashes are less attractive than a wad of dust.
posted by orme at 9:17 AM on October 13, 2010