Filming Human Cells

[Mike Van Laanen]

I will be filming a doc this summer and need to capture some shots of cellular manipulation. Has anyone here had experience capturing footage of individual cells at the microscopic level? I would really appreciate any advice on how I can capture these video images on my new Red (#855). Thanks

Michael

 

[Mike Prevette]

Talk to Clairmont, I'm pretty sure they have a PL to microscope adapter.

 

[BASSAM MSSALATIE]

it depends on the lens you will be using
you need T mount to pL mount adapter or Micro Bellow is much better with
microscop light ring :umm:

 

[Oliver Skibbe]

I will be filming a doc this summer and need to capture some shots of cellular manipulation. Has anyone here had experience capturing footage of individual cells at the microscopic level? I would really appreciate any advice on how I can capture these video images on my new Red (#855). Thanks

Michael

I'm doing photomicrography and video for a living, so I think I can give you some advice. Living human cell have to be handled very gently. You have to keep them sterile and warm. By the way: what kind of human cells are we talking about? Blood cells? Germ cells?
Anyway, for capturing this kind of footage you will need to use a modern inverted microscope with a heated object stage, micro manipulators, a photo tube and (if possible) some kind of image contrast ehancement, e.g. a differential interference contrast illumination.

Good luck, Oliver

 

[Harmonica]

Talk to Clairmont, I'm pretty sure they have a PL to microscope adapter.

If not, a quick google pulls up an abundance of SLR adapters that could be used with the birger mount or its like.

 

[jbeale]

I have worked in some fairly well-equipped labs and I have never seen an optical microscope image (in the magnification required for visibility of typical cells) that would justify using a 4k camera. So you might do just as well with some lesser camera, if the PL adaptor is hard to find.

If you want to do the numbers: a red blood cell is about 8 microns in size. Let's say you want to make sure it's visible in the frame, so you make your frame size 10 blood cells wide, or 80 microns. Now, a single 4k pixel will cover (80 um / 4096), or about 20 nm. The wavelength of green light is around 530 nm. You see the problem? Due to diffraction effects, even the best optical microscopes don't get much better resolution than a half wavelength of light. So at 4k, your camera resolution is more than 10x greater than the best the microscope can provide.

There are various scanning techniques to do better than the diffraction limit, and of course electron microscopes etc. but that's not something you'll be attaching a camera to optically (or viewing a live cell with in real time).

 

[Mike Van Laanen]

Thank you all for your help. I really appreciate it. Will let you know what I decide and hopefully post what I have captured in a short clip. As this film is my thesis film I only need HD broadcast quality (1080i/p) in the end. It would be nice to capture and archive it in at least 2k. But jbeale's post causes me some real concern about my success possibilities.

Oliver - I will be working with stem cells, blastocysts (human embryos 4-5 days old) heart muscle cells, skin cells etc.

Michael

 

[Oliver Skibbe]

I will be working with stem cells, blastocysts (human embryos 4-5 days old) heart muscle cells, skin cells etc.

Michael

Heart muscle cells and skin cells are somewhat bigger than red blood cells, about 15-25 µm in length. Still quite small. A 4 day old blastocyst should cause you less trouble. These are comparatively large clusters of cells, about 0.1 mm in diameter.

Oliver

 

[Martin Weiss]

Michael, may I ask how it all went?

Framegrabs??