Charlie, can you speak to the resolution on subject of the SLWD 40/0.40 versus say the ELWD 20/0.40 that you've used for other work? From a theoretical standpoint, both lenses should have the same resolution on subject, with the 40X simply providing a 2X enlargement of the central half of the 20X's ...

Craig, I suspect you're thinking of a Dec 2005 topic in the old forum. That's a long and somewhat chaotic topic on the general theme of sensor size, but here is the start of a portion where Charlie chimes in with some information & links about videoscopes, including this one: A Videoscopic View of t...

Wow!!

Just to let you know, I've been sitting here for several minutes, sipping my coffee and grinning like a madman, just reveling in these glorious images.

Maybe we need a site category for "Goalpost Races" -- let the games continue!

--Rik

icecilliate123 , welcome aboard. I recognize you from the Yahoo Microscope group. :) Regarding your first question, I suspect you mean Roman Vishniac . I have no personal experience with his work, but when I asked Google about roman vishniack microscopist , it suggested roman vishniac microscopist ...

Ah, I misread the timeline!

Now it seems that everything was perfectly normal and this was just the male's last hurrah, so to speak.

Finding big moths is always a treat. They are getting scarce to non-existent where I live. Even the tomato sphinxes don't show up anymore.

--Rik

Polyphemus moth -- see BugGuide . These critters are great fun. Beautiful caterpillars too. The mating ritual you observed was unusual to say the least. It's customary for the females to breed shortly after emergence, but from what I've seen the process usually takes hours, not minutes, and the male...

gpmatthews wrote:...especially as the eyes are so different.

I notice in that topic, you mention that the fly had been "waiting some time for its portrait to be taken".

I wonder, did your fly have some chance to dry out before being photographed? The eyes lose their iridescence quickly when drying.

--Rik

acerola wrote:I think I photographed the eating adult.

I think so too -- excellent!

--Rik

Selective pressure is a tricky thing.

Resources used to grow mouthparts are not available to grow, say, more eggs.

So unused parts always have an "opportunity cost". The critter that can get rid of them without breaking something else will be a step ahead of the competition.

--Rik

what would the point be of having a mouth if the adult didn't eat at all? There's always the possibility that what used to be mouthparts have been co-opted or reduced to other functions, such as chemical sensing to find good spots to lay eggs. My personal guess would be that these critters do a bit...

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I see I forgot to mention that the second image is just a crop from the same stack. It shows how much detail there is hiding behind the web-sized version. Doug, it's a good question what this thing eats, if at all. My Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insec...

There's probably no advantage in waiting. What you want is the full installer, http://www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZM/CombineZMFull.msi as linked on Alan's page. As best I can tell, that automatically brings with it the other bits needed by CombineZM that aren't already provided by Windows XP...

Nice job, and a challenging specimen to start with! :D Those long bright hairs at the bottom of the face are an invitation to trouble for most stacking algorithms. Bright hairs/bristles competing with a dark surface either in front or behind them are very prone to halo and visibility errors. If I ha...

http://www.janrik.net/MiscSubj/2008/CraneFly20080518/08-05-18_233938__MA_R8_S4_fp.jpg http://www.janrik.net/MiscSubj/2008/CraneFly20080518/08-05-18_233938__MA_R8_crop2.jpg It's crane fly week, I guess, and since this one turned up in a spiderweb, I figured maybe the spider could catch something els...

EXIF data in the posted file says 1/60 sec at f/4. Sensor size on a G9 is 7.6 x 5.7 mm, so equivalent to around f/11-f/16 on a DSLR.

--Rik