Of course you are right about live view. Was having a silly moment thinking about live view with silent first curtain shutter.

Can you fire the flashes if the camera is tethered to a computer through EOS Utility?

Deanimator Canon cameras do not trigger flashes in live view. This is not particularly well explained in some of the model manuals. This is a real shame, as this would be a winning combination for many people on here. If the flashes are working correctly when live view is not in use, they are workin...

It will be very interesting to know how repeatable the exposure is from shot to shot, i.e. to successive pictures of the same subject produce the same RGB values or are there variations.

This is a toolmaker's or machinist's microscope. They are used in precision engineering for measuring component sizes. I have a large Leitz toolmaker's scope. It is a heavy beast of a thing. The base is a single lump of cast iron, about 11 mm thick. It took two of us to lift it from a trolley onto t...

You can get second hand Corkmasters from ebay. They use a Sparklets carbon dioxide bulb. They were designed to be pushed through a wine bottle cork and then to inject enough gas to ease out the cork. Alright with a good quality bottle, but a disaster waiting to happen with cheap wine. I have one, an...

My pleasure, Johann. I only did the easy bit. Charlie did the difficult bit.

Peter

Charles, Happy to post. As I never save the results of playing with other members' forum images in Photoshop I have just redone the composite. If doing this for yourself, it is worth playing with the opacity slider on the "red" layer, as relatively small adjustments can make quite a large difference...

Charles, I took the liberty of taking the GIF into Photoshop and making the two frames into layers. The red layer was placed on top, blending mode was set to Luminosity, opacity to 62% and this gives most of the colours of the green version, with much of the internal structure from the red version. ...

Just a quick heads up - the new, third edition, of Waring and Townsend has just been published. The illustrations, by Richard Lewington" are excellent, and show the moths in a lifelike pose, rather than Skinner's set specimens. Another excellent choice would be British Moths - a Photographic Guide. ...

What you have here is some form of Hemiptera, with its piercing mouthparts on display. You can see that this is segmented. The snout of a weevil does not have this segmentation. It is probably not possible to identify the specimen fully, due to the "milky" nature of the amber. This is caused by a re...

The best way to get a really good surface on amber is to use aluminium oxide metal polish. After I have the surface looking good with 1500 grit paper, I use 1 micron and then 0.05 micron oxide. Both should be used on very soft, short nape felt. You can get this from the same sources as the polish. I...

This is starting to look much better. The exposure is still a little low. Another half stop or so on top of what you have already added in post would do no harm. Best to get that right by playing with the flash settings. The light is still a bit hot for my taste. Can you add a styrene cup as well as...

Charles,

You are welcome. A quick look online shows that it is now naturalised over much of North America. We seem to have done a good job on transatlantic weed swops.

Peter

Looks like Galium aparine. This is a common wildflower and garden weed here in the United Kingdom. Not sure of its status in the Americas.

Jen, A few fairly random thoughts. I agree that polystyrene cups are becoming increasingly uncommon sights. We used to get our tea at the Edinburgh Entomological Club in them. On the way out I would quietly pass by the bin and slip my empty cup into my pocket. I was not sure if anyone ever saw me do...