## Quantitative comparisons of macrophotography with and without Lieberkühn reflectors

In order to quantitatively examine the effect of the the 3D printed Lieberkühn reflectors I described previously, I came up with two image quality metrics relevant to their use, both measured on the “dark side” of the image subject. The metrics we will look at today are average intensity and, as a measure of contrast, the standard deviation of pixel values on a line trace.

I’ll be using the Megachile photo from the previous post for these analyses.

The first line trace begins at right eye and extends back behind the wing:

If we plot these values together, we see that the photo taken with the Lieberkühn (values in black) is brighter and brings out a lot more detail, while the photo taken without is relatively flat and dark. We see similar results for second and third traces, taken across the tegula and along the wing.

If we compare the average values:

octave3.2:25> mean(RE523(:,2)) %with Lieberkühn, right eye trace
ans = 102.00
octave3.2:26> mean(RE524(:,2))%w/o Lieberkühn, right eye trace
ans = 54.093
octave3.2:28> mean(AT523(:,2))%with Lieberkühn, trace across tegula
ans = 81.553
octave3.2:27> mean(AT524(:,2))%w/o Lieberkühn, trace across tegula
ans = 51.288
octave3.2:29> mean(W523(:,2))%with Lieberkühn, across the wing
ans = 103.85
octave3.2:30> mean(W524(:,2))%w/o Lieberkühn, across the wing
ans = 53.045

We see that taken together, the averages of the plots from the photo taken with the Lieberkühn are about 80% brighter than those without.

mean(Lieberkühn)/mean(no Lieberkühn) = 1.8142

octave3.2:56> std(RE523(:,2)))%with Lieberkühn, right eye trace
ans = 20.316
octave3.2:55> std(RE524(:,2))%w/o Lieberkühn, right eye trace
ans = 7.3926

octave3.2:54> std(AT523(:,2))%with Lieberkühn, trace across tegula
ans = 17.737
octave3.2:53> std(AT524(:,2))%w/o Lieberkühn, trace across tegula
ans = 13.227

octave3.2:52> std(W523(:,2))%with Lieberkühn, across the wing
ans = 12.746
octave3.2:51> std(W524(:,2))%w/o Lieberkühn, across the wing
ans = 8.2902

Using standard deviation as a metric for image detail, we get an increase of about 75% in standard deviation over the dark photo by using the reflector.

octave3.2:30> (20.316+17.737+12.746)/(7.3926+13.227+8.2902)
ans = 1.7572

The averages, standard deviation etc. may seem a bit redundant at this point; you don’t need to plot a pixel-value profile to see that the image with the reflector is much brighter and more detailed than the photo taken without.

## Designing 3D printable Lieberkühn Reflectors for macro- and micro-photography

Designing a Lieberkühn Reflectors for macro- and micro-photography

A Lieberkühn Reflector gets its name from one Johann Nathaniel Lieberkühn, who invented the speculum that bears his name which you may recognize from reflective headband decorations for doctor costumes. The name is generally changed from “speculum” to “reflector” when referring to optical reflectors used in photography and microscopy, perhaps because the term has drifted from its original Latin root meaning “mirror” to refer to probing instruments for dilating orifices.

Lieberkühn reflectors were a way to bathe an opaque specimen in fill light. Lieberkühn reflectors and their use have unfortunately fallen by the wayside with the advent of modern conveniences like LEDs and fiber optic illumination. The above example from the collection of the Royal Microscopical Society displays a Lieberkühn on a simple microscope. In use, the reflector would be pointed towards the specimen, and fed light by a second mirror like the one on the rightmost microscope. Both of the microscopes pictured were on display at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford

The working part of the Lieberkühn reflector is a parabolic mirror, which doesn’t add the spherical aberrations of hyper- or hypo-bolic configurations. As an added benefit, mirrors don’t tend to add chromatic dispersion or other aberrations associated with refraction (though they can effect polarisation). A parabola can be described as a a particular slice through a cone , but for the purposes of my first prototype, the functional description in cartesian coordinates will do.

$y = alpha x^2$
Where $alpha$ depends on the focal length of the parabola.
$alpha = 1 /4 f$

To get a functional, 3-dimensional mirror, I describe the parabola in terms of the focal length and a given radius as a 2D trace and spin it with rotate_extrude() in OpenSCAD. Leaving an aperture in the middle leaves room for light to reach the objective. The reflector shown below has a 4mm central aperture for the objective, 16mm focal length and 32mm diameter.

I have sent a few prototypes (matched to particular lenses or objectives) to Shapeways for prototyping. After some characterisation these will appear on theBilder shoppe.