Snow showers throughout the morning, tapering off in the afternoon. Temperatures in the mid 30s.
The stereo microscope arrived today. I was able to organize my desk in a way that I think will work for me. I wasn’t sure I would be able to fit both microscopes and the laptop which runs the camera, and still have space to work with subjects.
The adapter for my camera arrived as well. Using it does allow me to have focus through the viewfinder and with the camera at the same time on the compound scope. It also has 2x magnification over the straight open tube. On the other hand, the clarity of the image seems to suffer a bit.
I like the view through the eyepieces of the stereomicroscope, and am sure I will enjoy exploring the microworld through it. However, so far I’m disappointed with the function of the trinocular set up. It’s possible I got things set up incorrectly, but I had trouble getting a sharp image (certainly not like I was seeing through the eyepieces). I’ll review the manual tomorrow and see if I missed something.
One other deficiency in the stereomicroscope is the light that shines directly on subject. It’s not nearly bright enough, especially at higher magnifications. I had previously purchased a couple of different LEDs to use with the old stereomicroscope I had (which didn’t have any built in light), and I’m able to use them with this new scope, so that’s not a big deal for me.
I’m also going to need to investigate the software I’m using to control the camera. In particular, the actual images are coming out much brighter than it appears they will based on the live preview. I can manually compensate, but I would rather not need to.
Although I spent a bunch of the day doing stuff related to microscopes, I did get out for a bit.
I stepped out to take pictures of an Anna’s Hummingbird visiting the feeder. I was hoping to get pictures of it with snow, but it didn’t seem to have much tolerance for me. It visited the feeder a couple of times, perched in the tree, and even made some vocalizations. After a short time, it flew off to the southwest, and I didn’t feel like waiting for it.
This afternoon I went for a drive out to Starrigavan. The road had been plowed, so driving wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t as confident in the pullouts, so didn’t end up stopping anywhere to watch (it didn’t help that I wanted to get back home and do more with the microscopes).
I did start going through some collections from the past few days that I had only partially labeled. I saw enough to write more on the bags, but will need to revisit them to get better photos if I hope to get an identification on them.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
