Here is another, of even lesser IQ quality, from last year, just a single shot.

Over the last couple of years, I have seen several of these flies stuck to our house window. I assume it is some kind of bacteria colonizing on it?? Anyone know what is going on? How does the fly stick to the window, if the white is just bacteria? I want to get a 4X or 10X on it, but for now I just ...

johan wrote:Ultrasonic baths work well - see http://extreme-macro.co.uk/cleaning-insects/

Thanks! I had googled "how to clean insects" and all I got was info on how to clean them off a windshield.

Seems I read here recently of someone spending hours cleaning dust off of dried specimens. Is there a method that works better than others? Air? Flowing water? Brush? As can be seen, this one has accumulated plenty, and I didn't notice it until ready to stack. http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/u...

--bump -- has anyone recent experience of these things? I like mine, but could see room for improvement. The arms are stiff enough, and the functioning of the flash adjustments are simple. The middle LED light has limited use, it would need more power to make it fully effective. The biggest drawbac...

If you want some real earbugs, I can send you a box of brown marmorated stink bugs to stick in your ears. :-0 (Side note: Sunday afternoon we came home to find 100 ladybug beetles on and in our house, for every BMSB. 'Tis the season ...) When I speak of intense light, I mean adding 90 watts of fluor...

From a normal viewing distance, they do indeed look brown. But I once examined one under my dissecting scope, and saw iridescence similar to what you've captured. I also ran an image stack on the bug under fairly (though not completely) diffuse light. The resulting stack also recorded similar iride...

I guess that desaturating makes the high mag image conform to a preconception based on viewing at low mag. --Rik I sort of assumed that the intense light was making the green (some magenta, too) and that in normal viewing those colors would not be seen. But you have a point, and now I remember seei...

First image is as it came out of the stack, the second with the iridescence desaturated. 10X Nikon BE plan in front of 210 Minolta lens. 180~ shots. http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/4433_stink_bug_side_profileiridescence_1.jpg http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/4433_stink_bug...

This was done by my 15-year-old son, 40 shots with Nikon 4X BE Plan in front of a Minolta 70-210 "beercan" lens. Rik, that rolled up copy paper does a pretty good job. His diffuser looks pretty un-professional, with loose papers leaning here and there against one rolled up around the specimen, but i...

I dug up a straight macro (maybe about 1:2) shot of a full stink bug and here is a 100% crop. I think I see some greenish reflections in some of the pits, now that I look. So it probably is iridescence of some sort. Thanks for your input, Rik. http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/4433_stink...

My problem is that I have not been able to diffuse the light "so diffuse as to produce no highlights." But my 15-year-old son used some copy paper wrapped around the whole setup this morning (before I got out of bed) and a Nikon e 10X/0.25 PH 1 DL (he didn't know not to use such an objective on a 21...

I am wondering if the green splotches on this brown marmorated stink bug are because of 1) Nikon BE Plan 4X/0.10, or 2) my Minolta 70-210 f/4 "beercan" lens (sharp lens but known for CA), or 3) combination of both, or 4) something else? 351 shots with ZS DMAP. http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/u...

Hey, I got it this time! Thanks!

Thank you for sharing that. Always looking for better lighting techniques.