Dragonfly Eggs

[svalley]

I have been working on a project to photograph the development of the embryo in dragonfly eggs I collected from a female Aeshna palmata. They are 13 days old. I am experimenting with lighting techniques.

The first is with diffused lateral flash and a black background.



The second is with transmitted light from below, basically normal brightfield.



I was surprised to see that the two lighting methods caused the light and dark areas in the eggs to be reversed.

I plan to also try darkfield, but I am waiting for a set of darkfield mask disks to arrive.

Both images were shot with a Nikon D810, Mitutoyo 10x M Plan APO mounted on a 200mm Micro-Nikkor, electronic flash, StackShot and Zerene Stacker.

[rjlittlefield]

Nice images!

The reversal of bright & dark is typical of subjects that have clear areas and diffusive areas. In darkfield the diffusive areas scatter light into the lens so they appear light; in brightfield they scatter light away from the lens so they appear dark. It's a great way to tell whether something that's dark in brightfield is absorbing or scattering.

--Rik