Breathing tubes from a wasp.

[youngd123]

Shot using Olympus E-320 DSLR. Mounted to American Optical Model 160. Using 100x objective. Stacked image. Processed using Combine ZP

[ChrisR]

Intriguiing! Which part of the animal is it?
And can you tell us about your lighting?

[youngd123]

Intriguiing! Which part of the animal is it?
And can you tell us snout your lighting?

It is from the wasp's abdomen. Near the stinger. (Its a slide I made back in the last decade before I moved to California. The sample was mounted in Karo corn syrup.) The focus are on the trachea tubes. Those things that look like flex ducts.

For lighting. I used one of those under-counter puck lights. (The ones you see sold on late night TV.) Which while not any brighter than the lamp built into my scope. (A model common in schools during the 1960s.) Puts out a realy nice even light. With out all the heat. I simply removed the glass globe from the microscopes built in lamp. And just placed the puck light over the original bulb. So I have the option of LED or Incandescent lighting. And works pretty well. For $27 dollars. Oh and I still have three more for use else where in the house.

And the colors were produced by home made filters. Placed under the condenser.

Due to a very small budget. I live on social security. I make a lot of my own equipment. The camera adapter I made out of a plastic tube, duct tape and super glue. Has held up since 2008 believe it our not. Believe it or not. The equipment used to shoot this photo. Cost about $1000 total. Including the camera and dell desk top computer.

I will be posting more photos in the future.

[ChrisR]

Thanks for the info.
I imagined their tubes were a bit better organized than that!

The LED sounds neat.
You could maybe use a spare glass from one of the others to hold colored filters down in a whole range of Rheinberg arrangements.
http://www.quekett.org/resources/rheinberg