Microphotography from the 1970s

I found some microphotos from the 1970s when I was scanning some old slides and prints. The first set is algae from my last year of high school. It was a new school and the microscopes were new too. My boyfriend (a year later he became my husband) was the one with the camera and he had an adaptor to attach the camera to the microscope. The color images did not turn out as well as I wanted – the lamp was not bright enough or the film was not fast enough to make the background as white as it looked to the eye and the greens did not stand out. Still you can see the spirals of the spirogyra. I had collected samples from streams near where I lived; in one case the filamentous algae were growing on a rusting sewing machine that someone had dumped in the water (the algae had picked up the rusty color too).

The black and white image was actually better although some of the filaments look battered.

Several years later, I was taking a mycology class and had slides from various kinds of cultures fungus spore structures. We evidently didn’t bother with color slides although I wish now that we had since the dye used was a very nice blue.

Of course, all was film during that time period. There was a time lag between taking pictures and finding out if they were any good and it was relatively expensive. I’m glad we made the effort and managed the expenses. But it also increases my appreciation of digital photography!