Photography with a Microscope

Rating:
Summary: review
Review: "Photography with a Microscope" - This book by Fred Rost and Ron Oldfield describes how to record images through a microscope. The book has several weaknesses. First, although Cambridge University Press claims that this book is beautifully illustrated, it does not compare in image quality with the book from Prof. Werner Nachtigall (entitled "Exploring with the Microscope", Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. New York 1995), which cost significantly less. Second, this book is not current with photomicrography as it is done since the end of the last century. On just a few pages, digital, confocal, and video techniques are summarized. The excuse that "...no more than general principles have been outlined; anything more would be outmoded shortly after publication of the work." is unacceptable. Digital photography has its basic principles that only change slowly over time (just like classical photography). This book, written in 1999, does not discuss digital photography adequately. I therefore recommend the authors to change the title of their book into "Recent History of Photography with a Microscope". Last but not least, if this book is written for people interested in photomicrography (including beginners), the authors missed to add two important books to their list of references starting on page 265 (Georg Stehli, "The microscope and how to use it", Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1970, and the book from Werner Nachtigall mentioned above).

Rating:
Summary: lots of useful information for those getting into microscopy
Review: I spent a couple hours looking through this book while sitting in a bookstore, to determine if I should buy the book. I decided not to buy it because I had already learned most everything in it over the past several years of my own searches for information dealing with microscopy and photomicrography. So, if you are just getting into photomicrography, or need a good single reference book on the subject I would recommend it. I wouldn't say that I found anything really new in this book (except for an interesting epi-Rheinberg illumination image), but I was amazed at how much information was packed into it.

The book does cover a lot on film photography, in case you have any questions on that subject. The book is extemely easy to read and understand. A good deal of the equipement shown or mentioned is older, and can be found on the used markets at affordable prices (compared to new equipment). I didn't find a lot of pretty pictures (the ones in the book are very informative) in this book, but it's not intended to sit on your coffee table. I imagine its main use would be as a reference at your microscope bench (doesn't everyone have one of these?)