#HELICON FOCUS OBJECT EXAMPLES FULL#

Not surprisingly, the technology has quickly become incredibly popular among insect taxonomists and other biologists, and now it is hard to find a taxonomic paper that includes illustrations prepared any other way. It is also significantly cheaper than the SEM, and allows for non-destructive photography (specimens need to be coated with a thin layer of gold for SEM imaging, destroying their original coloration.) It also allows for high definition imaging of specimens preserved in alcohol and other fluids, something that was not possible with the SEM.

#HELICON FOCUS OBJECT EXAMPLES FULL#

Psychodid fly ( Clogmia albipunctata) from Woburn, MA Given sharp, aberration-free optics you could produce images that rival those taken with a scanning electron microscope (SEM), but in full color. The quality of the resulting images was far from perfect, but the technology held a lot of promise, and in the following years it has improved dramatically. Treehopper ( Ceresa sp.) from Woburn, MA I first became aware of the technology known as focus stacking in 2002 or so, when a new company called Syncroscopy came to our museum at Harvard to demonstrate its new software “ Auto-Montage.” It was designed to combine several shallow-focus images taken with a video camera attached to a microscope into one, seamlessly focused photo.

Helicon focus object examples