This surreal image was created using the world’s first instant photographic
film designed for photomicroscopists. ‘It looks like a gaily coloured iceberg
with multicoloured leaves floating above it,’ says Spike Walker, a microscopist
with Microworld Services of Penkridge in Staffordshire. ‘It’s actually a
mixture of sulphur with hydroxyquinoline which I melted together, recrystallised
and photographed,’ he says.
Walker says photomicroscopists rely on films designed for short exposure
times in daylight, or with a flash. But they take their pictures indoors
beneath powerful tungsten bulbs, and exposure times can be an hour or more.
As a result, the pictures are often marred, particularly the colours. ‘They
all tend to go into a wishy-washy greeny blue. It’s almost impossible to
get a red,’ says Walker. Polacolor 64 Tungsten, developed by Polaroid, is
designed for long exposure times and tungsten light. Walker, who evaluated
the film, says the ‘colours are extremely bright. I was over the moon.’
