Three times a lacewing

Images made through a microscope. All subject types.

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WalterD
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Three times a lacewing

Post by WalterD »

Lacewings or -literally translated from dutch- "gauze flies" : their appearance is included in their name. The lacewing I found at home was a green one (Chrysoperla rufilabris). There are not too many insects around here early spring. I learnt from previous posts that there are many more variants.
"Three times a lacewing" reads as three setups: 1) reflected light 2)fluorescent and 3) darkfield.
The first three photos were made with reflected light. Because the lacewing is green I wanted to pick a contrasting background, and used a red piece of cardboard to establish this. The background was illuminated seperately by a led, furthermore there was a flash combined with an Ikea reading lamp for the accents. Photo 1 : 1,6x/0.05. Photo 2 : 4x/0.12
Photo 3- 11x(Leitz Ultropak)/0.25 -is showing the characteristic eye with its rainbow of colours.

Next question was : what will it look like under a fluorescence microscope?
The answer can be seen photos 4 and 5 (9x/0,20). Some insect eyes are really lightening up under a fluorescent lamp, here the subtle mix of natural and unnatural colours puts the insect in a different light.

In order to proceed with darkfield illumination the head and one of the wings were mounted. Photo 6 is stitched from observation with a 6,3/0,20 objective. The original image was not too colourful from itself and the hairs were showing some irrelevant colours. Therefore it was directed through a green filter before reaching the camera, and desaturated while postprocessing. Not much larger than a normal frame, this photo suffered most from compression, even at 1920 pixels width specific details get lost.
(Better resolution images can be found here: http://waltermachielsen.com/lacewing/)


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Last edited by WalterD on Thu Apr 12, 2018 9:59 am, edited 3 times in total.

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

The black-and-white wing is my favorite, so perfect!

Jacek
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Post by Jacek »

Very nice. For me, the fourth photo is the best.

Saul
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Post by Saul »

Agree with Lou and Jacek - 4th is :shock: !
Saul
μ-stuff

GaryB
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Post by GaryB »

5 and 6 for me.
Outstanding!

dragonblade
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Post by dragonblade »

Amazing work. I like the first and sixth photos the best.

Roel Wijtmans
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Post by Roel Wijtmans »

Very cool photos! Love the UV ones.

WalterD
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Post by WalterD »

Thanks for your comments Roel, Gary, Dragonblade, Saul, Jacek and Lou. Always good to hear which is your favourite. I think four and six share the first place considering your votes!

A remark about the darkfield photo. Setup is always tricky with darkfield, as you need to find that "sweet spot" of the condenser height.
The stacking was not done at once. I'm always using Zerene, for this photo I first stacked all frames via pmax (Zerene users know what I mean). This resulted in a bit of a mess.Only after making a selection of frames-there were 3 different overlapping stacks- and processing them in dmap, I was able to merge it. While postprocessing first I aimed for a pitch black background. With Photoshop of course that's possible, however the result looked unnatural and synthetic. By adding more tone to the black via shadow/highlight the lighter parts of the photo -the hairs and frame of the wing- came out more representative.

Sumguy01
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Post by Sumguy01 »

:smt038 Very nice set.
Thanks for sharing.

hkv
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Post by hkv »

Amazing images! Thanks for sharing your techniques!
https://www.instagram.com/micromundusphotography
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vasselle
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Post by vasselle »

Very nice
Microscope Leitz Laborlux K
Boitier EOS 1200d

WalterD
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Post by WalterD »

8)
My pleasure.

JH
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Post by JH »

The wing picture is very artistic, thanks for the information about your technique.

Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg
Jörgen Hellberg, my webbsite www.hellberg.photo

Smokedaddy
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Post by Smokedaddy »

... excellent, I like them all. Great colors too.

anoldsole
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Post by anoldsole »

Love them all! But yea i'm a big fan of the black in particular as well

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