Excellent Laurie, Love the other post as well . how much closer to the little red hitch hiker
that was on the Moth can you get? it looked like it has some interesting facets on it's body.
The last shot of the red mite is as far as I can push the 10x scope objective, I reckon that's around 15:1. I do however have similar 20x and 40x objectives, but everything has to be totally locked down to use that kind of magnification and my current setup just doesn't seem quite stable enough yet, but I'm working on it!
Here's a 100% crop of the last shot which does show a little surface detail;
Excellent work on the fly and the mite lauriek. To my, I must say, untrained eye. Does it take a lot of time to do this sort of stuff? I haven't ventured there yet.
Mark yes it's quite time consuming, and takes a bit of work to get the rig setup properly, and either quite a bit of cash or quite a bit of time sitting on ebay trawling for goodies! (I chose the latter option)
Brian, yes this specimen is a couple of weeks old, it's been in the fridge a lot of that time but they eyes do start to discolour quite quickly once they are out of the freezer.
Tom asked for a picture of the rig I use to take these so after a bit of mucking about here it is, it's not pretty sorry I'm working in quite cramped conditions at the moment and some of the stuff around the rig doesn't have anywhere else to go! I painted/cloned out a bit of rubbish on the left of the rig and a reflection of a picture which was a bit confusing in the mirror just to the right of the rig...
Nikon Multiphot stand.
Olympus BH microscope microscope minus head.
Olympus OM Auto bellows mounted on Multiphot.
Olympus E330 camera mounted on OM bellows with MF1 adapter.
In this shot Nikon 10x/0.30 CF Plan objective mounted on OM bellows with Olympus PM-MTOB OM->RMS adapter.
Olympus STF-22 twinflash. In this image the control unit is obscuring most of the camera
Magnification is chosen by objective choice and bellows extension. Focus movement is done with the fine focus control on the microscope which moves the stage up and down in increments as low as 1 micron (or even 1/2 a micron if I have steady hands).
I guess theoretically I _could_ take the camera/bellows/objective/flash unit out into the field but I fear the dof available with this particular setup would be pretty much worthless on live subjects. Of course I could put the OM38/2.8 bellows lens on the front instead and try to have a bash at what you guys manage with the MP-E. Hmm...
