The images presented in this gallery were collected over a 25-year period of time. Those familiar with the science and "black art" of electron microscopy know that the quality of an EM negative is dependent upon many things (i.e., the kind of knife - diamond or glass; fixative used; staining; the instrument used to view them, just to name a few). I began taking EMs on a Philips model 100 and ended up several years later working on the 300 series model by the same manufacturer. As fixative and staining techniques improved, so did the quality of my sections. What I present here are the "left-overs" from numerous studies, some of which were actually accepted for publication. This means that I have had at my disposal several hundred reasonably high quality images that up to now could not be seen by anyone else but myself. Life is too short to keep them under wraps, and so I offer them to the scientific community at-large for whatever purposes they may deem useful. Many of them could not have been considered for publication due to knife marks, stain artifacts, etc. Nonetheless, they may still prove useful to those with interests in the structures captured on these films. So, enjoy them, warts and all!
Each EM negative has been converted into a digital image using an Epson model 2200 scanner at 4,000 dpi. I have endeavored not to "fool" with them in Photoshop (as tempting as it was to cover up my ineptitude as an electron microscopist), including cropping or focusing by sharpening the image, so the viewer can have as unaltered a view of them as is possible, given the constraints of the medium. The only thing I have done is convert them to grayscale. |