Dragonfly Eggs

Images taken in a controlled environment or with a posed subject. All subject types.

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svalley
Posts: 342
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 7:07 pm
Location: Albany, Oregon

Dragonfly Eggs

Post by svalley »

I have been working on a project to photograph the development of the embryo in dragonfly eggs I collected from a female Aeshna palmata. They are 13 days old. I am experimenting with lighting techniques.

The first is with diffused lateral flash and a black background.

Image

The second is with transmitted light from below, basically normal brightfield.

Image

I was surprised to see that the two lighting methods caused the light and dark areas in the eggs to be reversed.

I plan to also try darkfield, but I am waiting for a set of darkfield mask disks to arrive.

Both images were shot with a Nikon D810, Mitutoyo 10x M Plan APO mounted on a 200mm Micro-Nikkor, electronic flash, StackShot and Zerene Stacker.
"You can't build a time machine without weird optics"
Steve Valley - Albany, Oregon

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23543
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
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Re: Dragonfly Eggs

Post by rjlittlefield »

Nice images!

The reversal of bright & dark is typical of subjects that have clear areas and diffusive areas. In darkfield the diffusive areas scatter light into the lens so they appear light; in brightfield they scatter light away from the lens so they appear dark. It's a great way to tell whether something that's dark in brightfield is absorbing or scattering.

--Rik

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