Practice Makes Perfect

The last couple of weeks I’ve been getting in some practice here and there, taking pictures of eggs laid by backup lab culture flies, trying to figure out how to get the best picture I possibly can for measuring egg size in ObjectJ.

The 'Old' Way

Yesterday I size sorted IV flies, and let them lay on juice cookies over night. After clearing the flies and putting the cookies in the fridge to control for any changes in egg size from development, I worked my way through taking pictures of eggs in each size group. The pictures were looking pretty good, except for the lack of contrast between the red background and the eggs (that pick up a sort of pink colour from the cookie).

The 'New' Way

 It wasn’t until the last cookie that I discovered something that would make the photos much better. Instead of using a white platform underneath the juice cookie as I had been doing previously, I tried  using a black one. This instantly increased the contrast between the eggs and the background. I believe that with this discovery, future picture taking and egg measurements will be much more effective.

Getting in this practice and working out all the little details now will be very helpful in the future when I start working on my thesis project.