Starting to try and get a bit creative with some of these specimens. Bit limited on what you can do with a small dead insect glued to a piece of card, but still, doesn't hurt to try!


Nebria rufescens by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Hylobius abietis 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Forficula auricularia 3 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

Fly heads doesn't get old

Fly 3 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Untitled by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Hypera plantaginis 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Sitona regensteinensis 3 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

Russell is right, a flash burst is typically over in ~1/10,000 sec, so shutter speed makes no difference. This is also the reason why focal plane shutters have a max sync speed above which you can't use flash without clever technical jiggery pokery.

Had a bit of a technique breakthrough over the last week, whilst unemployed.

Used some light tent fabric to make a small cube tube, helps diffuse the light on the specimens. A black cloth positioned out of the light behind the subject gives a nice uniform black background. I've got some 1mm gauge black aluminium wire which I'm using to pin the specimens in the cube, stuck into some modelling clay.

First of all I retrieved a bunch of fried insects from inside a light fitting:

Lightbulb (halogen) Heat seems to make the bluebottle go more purple:

Bluebottle by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

Still working on what this is/was:

Chrysalis 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Cranefly by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

And then I went through some of the girlfriends sediment samples from her PhD. Added challenge here is they've all been preserved in alcohol so they are either wet, or wet and squishy. Hard to suspend on black wire.


BV 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Cockle 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

This shell is about 5mm long. I think I could get scale bars in the photos if I use some tipex on some wire to give an indication of size, I can then add a digital scale in photoshop after:

Hydro 3 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Coro 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Prawn 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Ragworm 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

This one is actually more like 10cm long. Again I need to get a scale bar in. Amazing what having mega DoF can do for screwing up sense of size and scale.

Worm pipefish 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

Some of the shadows are actually my attempts at cloning/masking out the pins holding the specimens

I've done some white background ones as well, it depends on the subject. I don't think a beige/off white object comes out that well on a white background. Darker things, like ants, or beetles work well though:

2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

 
8 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


2014-02-19-11.29 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr