Wasp antenna

bernhardinho · Post by **bernhardinho** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 4:11 pm

Hi folks

starting a series of wasp anatomy

So here is the antenna for a start

Bernhard

NikonUser · Post by **NikonUser** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 5:29 pm

Bernhard:
It would be nice to see an image of the entire wasp, or at least a species name.

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:10 am

Nice idea Bernhard. But your Stinger is much sharper...

You weren't doing this during the exposure:

??!

bernhardinho · Post by **bernhardinho** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 2:43 pm

NikonUser wrote:Bernhard:
It would be nice to see an image of the entire wasp, or at least a species name.

too late, it's in pieces now

Bernhard

bernhardinho · Post by **bernhardinho** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 3:02 pm

ChrisR wrote: But your Stinger is much sharper...

!

I beg your pardon...?? $\:D/$

Chris: I cut the wasp in pieces and prepared a couple of slides in order to get some insight in various parts of the insect. The mountant is Canada Balsam. Now, the tissue of the stinger is rather soft and it flattened nicely with moderat pressure applied to the coverglass. Hence it was possible to get some decent shots that I combined in a focus stack. The antenna is obviously made of much harder chitinous stuff that could not be squeezed at all. So the layer of mountant is rather thick which lessens resolution a bit. Although I tried to capture some detail of the antennas surface (not TOO sucessfully), the issue here turned out to be much more the play with contrast and colour. In this way I sort of like the pics. What else should I say ?

Cheers

Bernhard

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 4:51 pm

Are those full frame shots?
Wouldn't you expect more in focus from a stack?
Looking at this which featured in Beginners Macro Stack , if you blow up a small section the joint between the sections of antenna is quite sharp (no sharpening has been done)

Have you any more pieces?!! Maybe you could try one just laid on top of the stage?

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 5:27 pm

Hhmm... I assumed these were not stacks, since the focus trails off gradually.

But I didn't think about it very hard because I was more interested in the surface texture of the antennae.

I'm accustomed to antennae (in general) being covered with bristles and hairs, albeit sometimes very small. These seem to be basically smooth but knobby.

Of curiosity, I just now rechecked one of my many Polistes dominulus specimens. At 45X under a stereo scope, it seems quite similar to what I see here. But quite different from the NikonUser's yellowjacket HERE.

By the way, I agree with Bernhard about the lighting and colors -- they are easy on my eyes.

--Rik

bernhardinho · Post by **bernhardinho** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 5:23 am

ChrisR wrote:Are those full frame shots?
Wouldn't you expect more in focus from a stack?

Rik said it, the antenna wasn't a stack but single shots taken with a Coolpix 990 mounted on a compound microscope!!

See ya

Bernhard

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:00 am

bernhardinho wrote:too late, it's in pieces now

You could try some stitching software.

Harold

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:18 am

Oh, right, the stinger was soft so it was squashed flat and you did do a stack of that, but the poor antenna was deeper and you didn't stack it

Yes that would account for it!!!

bernhardinho · Post by **bernhardinho** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:33 am

ChrisR wrote:Oh, right, the stinger was soft so it was squashed flat and you did do a stack of that, but the poor antenna was deeper and you didn't stack it

!

Am I mistaken or do I trace some hints of irony there

Mind you, the stinger still wasn't flat enough to get an entire sharp image all over the field so I made a focus stack, not a DOF stack!!

In the case of our poor antenna it would not have made sense IMO to do a stack. It would have looked artificially flattened which I tried to avoid.

Does that make any sense to you?

Cheers

Bernhard