| About Crystal-Land The photographs in Crystal-Land were taken with a 35mm. camera body on Ektachrome slide film through a light microscope built in 1915. They were scanned into Photoshop with a Polaroid Sprintscan on a PC platform and saved, in most cases, in jpg. format. In color and general appearance the photomicrographs appear as in the original slides. The site was designed for Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers, 16-bit or higher color (image quality suffers at 256 color) and a monitor resolution of 800x600 pixels. Your browser needs to be java-script enabled in order to see the more technical captions hidden beneath the poetic descriptions.
Photography through the Microscope While it's easier to just look at things through the microscope rather than photograph them, taking excellent photomicrographs is certainly within the grasp of the determined amateur. Sophisticated (and expensive) professional photomicroscopy systems are available from all the major microscope manufacturers, but much can be done with simpler equipment. Most chemical companies are no longer willing to sell chemicals, not even relatively safe ones, to individuals – one now needs to be associated with a university or company – so it's become more difficult to get hold of the various liquid crystals pictured in this site. However, much can be done with ordinary vitamin C, which is available at drug and health-food stores. Be sure to get pure vitamin C powder rather than tablets, which often contain binders, etc., and use water or isopropyl alcohol as the solvent. Sodium thiosulphate (used in film developing and available as "hypo" at photographic supply stores), epsom salts and aspirin can also be tried. See also the Molecular Expressions site (link below) for other possible subjects and a good general discussion on photomicroscopy.
Credits and Copyrights All photographs and content in Crystal-Land © Copyright James Bell 1998, except as noted below: The drawing in the introduction is by the talented free-lance illustrator Nancy Adams. Demeter of Cnidus photograph courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. The image of Galahad courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library. It is from The Oath of Knighthood, one of a series of paintings illustrating The Quest for the Holy Grail by the American artist Edwin Austin Abbey, found at the library's main branch. For a set of postcards of these fine paintings send $3 plus $2.50 shipping (per order not per set) to: Boston Public Library Nicholas Bessmer's imaginative poem, The Archaic Being, was the inspiration for the "Meteoric will..." lines. Other souces for images were Planet Art - (800)200-3405 - (the sun, angel, and Michelangelo painting), and Dover Publications of Mineola, NY, who publish many fine clip-art books.
Links There's a variety of excellent microscopy-related sites on the internet - here are a few: Microscopy U.K. is the gateway into the lively British amateur microscopy scene. Their online magazine Micscape offers an excellent collection of unusual articles, contributed by dedicated amateurs from around the world.
Molecular Expressions is a large university-based site with an amazing amount of stuff, including photos and videos of an astonishing variety of crystalline substances. MicroAngela has taken lots of fun and colorful scanning electron microscope images of bugs and more... Loes Modderman Microscopic Science-Art contains photos of a wide variety of crystalline substances as well as some kaleidoscopic designs she's made from them.
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