Introduction

This episode of “Under the Microscope” focusses on a common Australian breakfast cereal; coco pops. This so far has been one of my favorite under the microscope segments as the image is so abstract that I would have never guessed that the item under the microscope is actually the breakfast cereal.

Coco pops, also known as Cocoa Krispies are a breakfast cereal made of crisped rice that expands to form thin and hollowed out walls that are cruncy (thus the Krispies / Pop in the name). In the case of the Coco Pop they are then coated in a coco flavoring.

In the case of the images below, they were captured using a microscope and focus stacked (from around 8 – 10 images) using dedicated focus stacking software.

Equipment / Software Used

Whenever I shoot images I normally use hardware and software which is designed in some way to make the tasks easier to complete (e.g. software to automatically stitch the images into a panorama). The software and hardware typically used normally includes the following;

• Nikon D5300 Digital SLR Camera
• Adobe Lightroom CC / Photoshop CC
• Radical Microscope (Affiliate Link)
• DSLR to Camera Adapter (Affiliate Link)
• Helicon Focus

Images

Coco Pop at low magnification (8x) under brightfield illumination

Coco pop at higher magnification (20x) under brightfield illumination.

Coco pop under higher magnification (20x) and darkfield illumination.

As always, if you have something you think would be interesting you want me to try and image under the microscope don't hesitate to mention in it the comments, through the contact me section or on social media.