Darkfield

Day 27: It occurred to me that I hadn't properly introduced Darkfield to my readers, so with today being another Pacific Northwest Classic (i.e., rain and gloom), I grabbed a little botanical material and some of the tools of the trade to keep him company in this presentation. Darkfield microscopy employs a special condenser below the stage to focus light in such a manner that that which is directly transmitted does not enter the objective, only scattered light from the specimen. The specimen appears on a dark background rather than the bright field seen through a standard microscope. Specimen features invisible in brightfield may become visible in darkfield. The darkfield 'scope is definitely a step up for me, and since I bought it, not a day has passed that I didn't use it to examine something.