Always fun to report a new article. At the end of last year I was asked to write a piece on the use of oblique lighting for the Postal Microscopical Society (an amazing group established in 1873). It was recently published in their journal, Balsam Post.

Oblique lighting helps to provide a more ‘3D’ appearance to microscope images, and can be very useful when looking at faint structures and features on subjects such as diatoms. For example, the image below – the diatom Triceratium robertsianum from King George’s Sound, on a slide by Samuel Henry Meakin, which was captured using oblique lighting from below.

The technique seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit these days, however it is a simple (and cheap) approach and can be done quite easily on all microscopes even if you don’t have an oblique condenser.

For anyone interested in microscopy and its history, I would strongly recommend joining the Postal Microscopical Society (see here). As well as being part of a really long running society with an immense wealth of knowledge, you have the option of signing up to receive slides from their collection on a regular basis to image.

As always, thanks for reading. My up to date publication list can be found here, and my contact details here. If you’re interested in seeing more of my diatom images, please checkout my online museum diatomimaging.com where I have thousands of high resolution photos, as well as background to the slides and techniques I use to capture the photos.