Video of Sminthurinus niger wandering around on the top of an upturned clay pot. Taken with my little modded sports camera. The springtail is about 0.8mm body length.
I have cleaned the sensor since

Brian V.

Link

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/33035688011

Wonderful stuff paul. I'm very jealous of the photo opportunities but not the discomfort
Brian v.

JH wrote:Lovely video

Regards Jörgen

Thanks Jorgen
Brian v.

Still playing with my little sportscam. Taken with my little sportscam with an industrial c-mount high magnification lens fitted. sportscam cost £33, Lens cost £30, C mount adapter, M12 ext tube and UV/IR cut filter around £15. Taken in low light with no additional lighting - handheld. Working dista...

keks wrote:Very interesting to see such a small animal in its normal (my impression) behavior! Reminds me of a cow on its pasture.

Thanks for the comments Keks- yes I always think of them as alien 6 legged cows.

Brian V.

As common as these must be, I have not seen many and I am sure I have not seen the cute little globular springtails. I suppose they are generally on the ground, in shaded areas? They are common in Winter here. Yes they prefer damp areas so under fallen leaves is a good place to find them. They are ...

I've been playing around with a cheapo sports camera clone. For these videos I've replaced the lens with a cctv zoom lens with no IR cut filter. This seems to make it far more sensitive to light but gives a rather odd colour rendition which I have filtered a bit in PP (it also enables me to use it a...

Another example with springtails where clean focus is missing on one of the pair.

Brian V.

Thanks all for the info. I was surprised that the areas eg antennae that were clearly different in detail level still seemed to give a reasonably correct spacial image that seemed to carry the detail. It may be something to do with eye dominance I suppose as long as the dominant eye is seeing the de...

Doing a focus stack of this little springtail sitting on a fence rail. Managed one sequence but when I started doing a second sequence for a stereo pair, I managed one shot and then it moved. Just for fun I tried a cross-eye stereo of the stack on one side and the single shot on the other and it app...

Still playing with the camera. Having purchased a spare lens I have removed the IR/UV filter from the first lens and now have an IR set up. Example shot below. I have temporarily fitted an industrial C mount macro lens and it gives a mag range of around 1cm to 3.5mm across the frame but I need an ex...

There are a few more interesting things about these action cameras (or at least some of them, I know from direct experience that the following applies to some of the Gopro models, and it may or may not apply to other brands and models): The NIR- and UV-cut filter is stuck at the rear of the lens, n...

Bought one of those tiny gopro clones on amazon on offer and have been having a play. As is, it does not focus very close (it's a fixed focus lens) but adding a Raynox DCR-250 to it enables it to focus down to about 3" away. A 14mp sensor and lots of built in capabilities such as interval shooting b...

JohnKoerner wrote:Beautiful work and fascinating concept.

Thanks John
One of those Winter bad weather exercises
Brian v.

In take 2 I solved the motion blur just using a higher shutter speed but the shots still had OOF areas due to the angle of the camera to the soap film needed to see the colours. With take 3 I added more glycerol to the soap mix and found the colour patterns stopped swirling around. This allowed me ...