FIRST STEPS IN MICROSCOPIC MOTION PHOTOGRAPHY 95 



which meant a magnification of about two hundred 

 and fifty diameters. If I got the top of the grain 

 sharp, the center and bottom would be out of focus 

 and if the middle plane were sharp the top and bot- 

 tom would be out. After many trials I found that by 

 using a low power lens I could get a small image 

 perfectly sharp. I focused on a piece of ground glass 

 in place of the eye piece, then with a second micro- 

 scope I was enabled to magnify that sharp image as 

 much as I desired. I found that if I picked the image 

 up from the ground glass, the result was granular, 

 but that I could remove the ground glass and pick 

 it up out of the air. That gave me the desired size 

 of the object on the film and sharp in all its planes. 



I made a wooden track with carriages sliding back 

 and forth, fastened the camera at one end, the light 

 at the other, then built carriages for each micro- 

 scope; these were in perfect alignment from the light 

 to the center of the film. The results were good, but 

 not as perfect as I wanted. The student lenses were 

 old and scratched and the condensers in poor shape 

 and of an old style. 



I bought the best compound microscope I could 

 find and a set of achromatic lenses, eye pieces 

 and condensers, and then started to take pictures of 

 sweet pea pollen germinating in a drop of sweetened 

 water. This brought immediate results and some 



