Pond skater, Gerris lacustris

[gpmatthews]

I had real troubles getting these stacks to work - all taken through a Wild M8, but was having trouble getting small enough focus increments for the stacks. Anyway, this specimen was collected a few days ago at the local mill pond

[rjlittlefield]

Graham,

Interesting anatomy to these things. I would not have predicted the little hook at the end of the beak. Do you know if live specimens have this, or does it form in only death?

About the stacking, I can see in your pic3 that the eye seems to have layers that are in and out of focus. I presume this is the problem that you're talking about. Unfortunately, I don't have any great suggestions for how to fix it. You might find that it helps to shoot a couple of stacks and process them together. Sometimes it happens that the focus planes of one stack happen to line up between the focus planes of another. In that case -- presuming that the lighting did not change -- the software may be able to do better with the two stacks than with either one alone.

These are interesting animals and pictures -- thanks for sharing.

--Rik

[gpmatthews]

Here is another attempt at stacking with a different set-up:

Microscope: Zeiss Standard 16
Ocular: Watson x8 compensating
Objective: Zeiss x1.6 - 5
LED backlighting
100W filament lamp with diffuser
Sample from Warnham LNR April 2007
Approx 90 images/Helicon Focus

[beetleman]

Well, one thing, I didn`t know they had so much hair on them. The little hook might be used to get into the little nooks and crannys in the body armour of its victims. Nice going graham. Second stack is much better.