250 Transactions of ihe 



II. — Some BemarJcs on the Art of Fhotographing Microscopic 

 Objects. By Alfred Sanders, M.E.C.S., F.L.S., and F.R.M.S., 

 Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy at the London Hospital 

 Medical College. 



(Bead he/ore the Koyal Microscopical Society, Nov. 5, 1873.) 



It has often struck me as a curious fact that the process of taking 

 microscopic photographs has received so little attention from 

 working anatomists. I think the solution of this enigma is to be 

 found in the immense amount of apparatus which is supposed to 

 be required ; to look at Moitessier's * book, or, worse still, at the 

 paper by Dr. Berthold Benecke, in Max Schultze's ' Archiv ' f — 

 to contemplate the paraphernalia there set forth, the condensers, 

 achromatic and non-achromatic, the plate of ground glass, and the 

 long array of apparatus, is enough to deter anyone whose time is fully 

 occupied from attempting the art. Other writers seem to require 

 the whole force of a government establishment, a large darkened 

 room, and a heliostat ; they speak of employing a practical photo- 

 grapher one or two evenings a month to help them to reproduce all 

 the more interesting of the month's observations, forgetting appa- 

 rently that it might be necessary to copy fresh objects which would 

 not keep until the photographer happened to be disengaged. I have 

 found it possible to dispense with most of this apparatus, and to do 

 the work with a microscope, an ordinary camera, and a deal or 

 mahogany board. 



In the succeeding remarks I do not think that I have anything 

 absolutely new to give ; yet there are many little processes, and if 

 I may use the term " wrinkles," which would have saved me a 

 world of trouble if I had been acquainted with them formerly, 

 and which I hope will be of corresponding service to others who 

 may be desirous of acquiring skill in the art ; they are not to be 

 found in books, and I have had to learn them by sheer experience. 

 My apparatus is very simple; it consists of a mahogany board 

 four feet in length and ten inches in width, which is made to 

 double up in the centre for convenience in travelling; there is 

 a slit running longitudinally from near one end to within three 

 inches of the other ; at the extremity three screws are arranged so 

 as to fix down the microscope square to the board ; taking an ordi- 

 nary bellows camera, I have had the frame which carries the lens 

 separated from that which carries the focussing glass, and fitted to 

 a foot which can be fastened at any part of the board by means of 

 a screw passing through the slit ; the focussing frame has been 

 treated in the same manner ; the two parts were then connected by 



* T>a photographic applique'e aux recheiches micrographiqucs. 

 t Dritter Band eretes Heft, 1867. 



