If you ever tried to film soil organisms please let me know. I am perticularly interested in experiences with some taxa, ie. with tardigrades. Also interested in technical issues, which camera could be used for sufficiently deep sharpness of final shot when filmin mesofauna? Any experience or advice welcomed.
My colleagues explored biopores with an endoscopic camera. On this occasion they also took some photos / videos of earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris) inside the pores. You can find a description of the equipment they used in the publication I linked below (page 5, 2nd paragraph).
Since tardigrades are somewhat smaller, you would have to get some kind of magnification...
I hope this helps.
Article Root growth in biopores—evaluation with in situ endoscopy
I only know it is tricky, but one thing I've seen is something called usb microscopes (have up to 900 times magnification and led light), that are developed for checking electronic curcuit etc. We only film them through the microscope which need a good camera and a good microscope and lots of light. So haven't tried the usb ones yet
Good luck
Never done this myself, but I recall a few years ago when a colleague of mine showed me some of his minirhizotron video images. As you may know, the minirhizotron tubes are transparent plastic tube buried in the soil for in situ root growth observation using either still images or videos. My colleague was very excited to show me a large number of videos that had successfully but unintentionally captured soil faunas as small as Springtails (Collembola). I'd venture that if you look up the literature for minirhizotron techniques, you might find helpful tips.
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