HG, P_T. Fair comment. Too much work to clean up the background. Will try again next year for a cleaner head - too late this year, all the decent bugs have gone.

Based on a comment by dmillard
HERE
my obligatory fly face for a new contributor.
Deer Fly, male.
Taken earlier this year, exposure details not recorded. A Helicon Focus 4.1 stack.

EDIT: title changed

Yes, very nice.
definitely a Charaxes sp. possibly C. jasius - Two-tailed Pasha.

Excellent photos of Common Buckeye Junonia coenia

beetleman wrote: Is this specimen pinned or on a paper point and than you airbrush everything out?

Pinned, see HERE for technique.

Charles: Thanks for the very useful information. It seems that the MF 105 will cover much of my needs but will keep a look out for an El-Nikkor. I did make a bid on one (El-Nikkor) on E-Bay a while back but was unsuccessful.

Ken: I think your ID is most reasonable. I don't suppose you noticed the ventral surface. Strobilomyces floccopus has pores (it is a Bolete); Lentinus spp. have gills (they are Basidiomycetes). Your fungus is also called "Pine Cone Fungus" possibly because it's cap somewhat resembles the surface of ...

I have a D2Xs, MF 105mm and MF 200mm Micro Nikkors and both of these in the more recent AF models Before I would jump in with a recommendation can you clarify something? I'm a little confused as to which 105 you have. When you say "MF" I'm thinking "manual focus", but then you say "more recent AF m...

DaveW: thanks for the links Joseph S. Wisniewski: thanks for the detailed explanation re. magnification. For the CA questions: both shot RAW; both processed with Photoshop CS2; identical everything except for switching camera bodies; no blown channels. Is there some basic arrangement that is prefera...

Close-up photos of the bits and pieces used by the different spp. of caddisfly larvae would make an interesting montage. Really have no idea what these are but they do fit some descriptions of Brachycentrus spp.: cases square in cross-section; made of sand or pieces of plant debris; found in running...

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/569_img025_1.jpg http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/569_img026_1.jpg Ichneumonid wasp, a parasitoid, in the larval stage, of the caterpillars of lepidoptera. Length, excluding antennae, 14.5mm A black and yellow pattern is a standard aposemat...

I split your 3rd image in half vertically and overlaid the right half next to the right half of your 2nd image. If you do this and post such an image you will see how easy it is to compare the 2nd and 3rd images (it should be repeated for the left halves also). My personal opinion is that your last ...

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/569_img024_1.jpg The gill structure of mushrooms can be observed by looking at the underside. An alternative method is to make a spore print. Such a print shows the arrangement of the gills. Best to take a very fresh mushroom, break off the cap and lay ...

.......... In fact the new D300 prosumer camera, at a far smaller price, now beats the pants off the D2Xs although having a similar sensor size from all accounts, which is what another 14 months of sensor development and it's surrounding circuitry does. DaveW I spent several years assembling a phot...

Photo: 11 September 2008 http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/569_img021_1.jpg Note that left legs 1 and 3 are missing, but apparently not a problem. From a text book: "Autotomy is frequently practised as an escape reaction, no regeneration of limbs occurs. A minimum of 4 legs, provided one...