John's microscopy camera rig

I had a meeting this morning to view the work in progress of the new Stroud Preservation Trust website which all looked good to me. Hopefully it will be up within a couple of weeks and in time for the SPT exhibition at the Museum in the Park, in Stroud.

Then I drove up to visit John W. to discuss the arrangements for our trip to London in a couple of weeks. I want to introduce him to Phil, a former colleague of mine from the 1980s, who might be able to give some technical advice about how to link and sync video cameras for stereo image recording. I have very little practical knowledge about the optical issues that will be involved let alone the electronic and digital sensor ones. But I have a feeling that they will sort it out.

While we chatted in John's workshop, I suggested that I take a few pictures of some of John's equipment to send to Phil in advance, so that he has an idea of what is involved. This was one of my first simple shots of John's camera rig, which he has designed and made to enable him to align the camera with the light output of a huge and high magnification microscope, in order to record his images. The next stage is to build a new rig for two video cameras to record simultaneous video frames. Yikes!

I then went on to shoot various other views of the equipment in rather tricky conditions with only a small amount of directional light, which I found quite testing. It was fun, and I wish I could show the whole rig set up with the camera aligned with the microscope. But although the images useable are for information purposes, they weren't as good for blip purposes. So here is the basic profile shot. Perhaps I will show you more of the 'bigger picture' in due course.

I didn't get home till after 5pm, by which time fellow blipper Lozarithm had arrived for his pre-arranged visit, since he had to come to Stroud today anyway. It is now after 10-30pm, and he has just driven home after a fun evening and a good meal cooked by Woodpeckers, with lots of chat about music, cameras and other stuff!