If you attached the velcro to loops of material and then the loops to the trap, when you opened the aperture, you'd be pulling on the velcro, not on the trap. You'd need to be sure to use both loops when opening it so as not to stress the trap material. I don't quite follow, so any way you can clar...

ChrisR wrote:Glue small magnets on?

Interesting idea, might work, if I could source the magnets locally. I'd definitely have to keep an eye on the weight though.

I wasn't sure which section to post this to, but since I am using a trap for butterfly and moth acquisition to do macro later, I was hoping I could place it here. Anyway, I've attached an image of the top of my DIY trap. I'm having a problem. By the end of the day, not only am I getting some butterf...

Have a dried reddish brown stag beetle that I would like to manipulate into a pose. Is there any way to just quickly relax the legs only without having to relax the entire beetle? I tried applying ammonia to the legs as that was a trick I had read about, but had no effect.

Thanks!

Selling Nikon BE Plan 10x/0.25 MRN70100 objective, hardly used and Nikon Labophot 2. The objective is like new; the Labophot is very bare body only, no stage or light/ light lens-- basically I had this for the focus block precision. The focus block had a cracked gear and I replaced it, no bumps very...

Hi ctron.. May I ask what lens and settings you used. The total stack and UM please? WOuld be interested in seeing you setup and lighting if possible cheers Denis Hi Denis, For this shot, I used a Nikon 10x/.25 objective mounted onto a Zeiss Sonnar 135mm lens using this set up (with some slight mod...

In the uncropped version, the far antenna looks "too big". Try rerunning the stack with scaling turned off. 700 - you need to phone your mother anyway... ;) I just wanted to add something here. After this issue about scaling came up, I decided to take a closer look under the microscope I recently a...

Nice one, very good detail and lighting. Compositionally, I would have tried to position the appendages a bit better. - Macrero Thanks. If by "appendages" you mean the antennae, I tried, but the head was so large in this FOV that I found it impossible to move them into any decent, natural position.

Had some time to stack one of the smaller carpenter ants I found a few weeks back. Even so, it was fairly difficult to frame in the FOV properly, most of the body too large except at certain angles. This was the first time I used the new "toy" microscope (which is actually decent quality) to clean m...

Thanks, Lou. Well, although I was able to much more easily manipulate the ant under the microscope, I was still unable to remove the carpet fibers. I tried dusting them away with a very small tipped paintbrush, like you'd find in a Testor's modeling paint set, but to no avail. Some of the were remov...

Got lucky this week and picked up one of these from an estate sale. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality, more than adequate for working with the specimens. It also wouldn't be that difficult to move the eyepieces even further away than they are for even more mag. Not bad for $2. I do have a qu...

Thanks! I did notice three sizes of them while observing their tracks up and down the shed walls. This image was made from one of the largest ones I found, but I have since caught one of the smallest I've seen and hoping to do something with that one later.

Getting this as best as I could didn't come without a price! The good news is that I found a spot in one of my decaying outdoor sheds (definitely a project for this Summer) that will provide a fresh supply of carpenter ants of various sizes. What amazes me is how fast they are if you try and capture...

I think it's obvious that before temps warm and bugs start appearing here in abundance, there's a few things I still need to iron out. To start off, since I won't be able to catch, kill and image bugs same day, I am probably going to end up freezing quite a few for study/ imaging later. The problem ...

I expect that's just catching the light at a strange angle (with perhaps some backlight shining through it). What preservation method did you use - perhaps that had an impact on some glands having shrunk or been removed that may normally mitigate this. I do see some lighter color cheeks on some ant...