Three times a lacewing
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Three times a lacewing
Lacewings or -literally translated from dutch- "gauze flies" : their appearance is included in their name. The lacewing I found at home was a green one (Chrysoperla rufilabris). There are not too many insects around here early spring. I learnt from previous posts that there are many more variants.
"Three times a lacewing" reads as three setups: 1) reflected light 2)fluorescent and 3) darkfield.
The first three photos were made with reflected light. Because the lacewing is green I wanted to pick a contrasting background, and used a red piece of cardboard to establish this. The background was illuminated seperately by a led, furthermore there was a flash combined with an Ikea reading lamp for the accents. Photo 1 : 1,6x/0.05. Photo 2 : 4x/0.12
Photo 3- 11x(Leitz Ultropak)/0.25 -is showing the characteristic eye with its rainbow of colours.
Next question was : what will it look like under a fluorescence microscope?
The answer can be seen photos 4 and 5 (9x/0,20). Some insect eyes are really lightening up under a fluorescent lamp, here the subtle mix of natural and unnatural colours puts the insect in a different light.
In order to proceed with darkfield illumination the head and one of the wings were mounted. Photo 6 is stitched from observation with a 6,3/0,20 objective. The original image was not too colourful from itself and the hairs were showing some irrelevant colours. Therefore it was directed through a green filter before reaching the camera, and desaturated while postprocessing. Not much larger than a normal frame, this photo suffered most from compression, even at 1920 pixels width specific details get lost.
(Better resolution images can be found here: http://waltermachielsen.com/lacewing/)
"Three times a lacewing" reads as three setups: 1) reflected light 2)fluorescent and 3) darkfield.
The first three photos were made with reflected light. Because the lacewing is green I wanted to pick a contrasting background, and used a red piece of cardboard to establish this. The background was illuminated seperately by a led, furthermore there was a flash combined with an Ikea reading lamp for the accents. Photo 1 : 1,6x/0.05. Photo 2 : 4x/0.12
Photo 3- 11x(Leitz Ultropak)/0.25 -is showing the characteristic eye with its rainbow of colours.
Next question was : what will it look like under a fluorescence microscope?
The answer can be seen photos 4 and 5 (9x/0,20). Some insect eyes are really lightening up under a fluorescent lamp, here the subtle mix of natural and unnatural colours puts the insect in a different light.
In order to proceed with darkfield illumination the head and one of the wings were mounted. Photo 6 is stitched from observation with a 6,3/0,20 objective. The original image was not too colourful from itself and the hairs were showing some irrelevant colours. Therefore it was directed through a green filter before reaching the camera, and desaturated while postprocessing. Not much larger than a normal frame, this photo suffered most from compression, even at 1920 pixels width specific details get lost.
(Better resolution images can be found here: http://waltermachielsen.com/lacewing/)
Last edited by WalterD on Thu Apr 12, 2018 9:59 am, edited 3 times in total.
- dragonblade
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Thanks for your comments Roel, Gary, Dragonblade, Saul, Jacek and Lou. Always good to hear which is your favourite. I think four and six share the first place considering your votes!
A remark about the darkfield photo. Setup is always tricky with darkfield, as you need to find that "sweet spot" of the condenser height.
The stacking was not done at once. I'm always using Zerene, for this photo I first stacked all frames via pmax (Zerene users know what I mean). This resulted in a bit of a mess.Only after making a selection of frames-there were 3 different overlapping stacks- and processing them in dmap, I was able to merge it. While postprocessing first I aimed for a pitch black background. With Photoshop of course that's possible, however the result looked unnatural and synthetic. By adding more tone to the black via shadow/highlight the lighter parts of the photo -the hairs and frame of the wing- came out more representative.
A remark about the darkfield photo. Setup is always tricky with darkfield, as you need to find that "sweet spot" of the condenser height.
The stacking was not done at once. I'm always using Zerene, for this photo I first stacked all frames via pmax (Zerene users know what I mean). This resulted in a bit of a mess.Only after making a selection of frames-there were 3 different overlapping stacks- and processing them in dmap, I was able to merge it. While postprocessing first I aimed for a pitch black background. With Photoshop of course that's possible, however the result looked unnatural and synthetic. By adding more tone to the black via shadow/highlight the lighter parts of the photo -the hairs and frame of the wing- came out more representative.
Amazing images! Thanks for sharing your techniques!
https://www.instagram.com/micromundusphotography
https://www.flickr.com/photos/micromundus
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0UdYN ... YH_litDZjA
Olympus BX51 | Olympus CX23 | Olympus SZ4045 | Zeiss EVO LS 10
https://www.flickr.com/photos/micromundus
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0UdYN ... YH_litDZjA
Olympus BX51 | Olympus CX23 | Olympus SZ4045 | Zeiss EVO LS 10
The wing picture is very artistic, thanks for the information about your technique.
Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg
Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg
Jörgen Hellberg, my webbsite www.hellberg.photo
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