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Posted by mark on Jun 18 2015 in Insect Photography, Macro Photography, Focus Stacking, Extreme Macro
  • « Toad in the Dew
  • June Bug »

Firefly

The fireflies (a.k.a. Lightning Bugs) made their appearance here in SW Michigan in the past week or so. Here is a closeup: 

Fire Fly (Photinus pyralis)

Fire Fly (Photinus pyralis)

This is likely Photinus pyralis.

Seventy stacked images in two passes. Magnification of approximately 7x lifesized. Pentax K3, SMC K 24mm f3.5 reverse mounted on extension.

I try to make at least one improvement with each of these super macro sessions. In this case I changed how the mounted insect was supported. I had been mounting the insect on a pin and then sticking the pin into a ball of putty. This allowed for easy positioning of the subject, but it could move slightly (specifically - sink slowly) and that has become more apparent at higher magnification. In this case I simply positioned the mounted subject into surgical clamps, which held it tight without the gradual sinking, but made positioning the subject a bit more fiddly. I also used 3 flashes, all manual, for illumination, changing from the two flash setup I had been using.

This entry was posted by Mark and filed under Insect Photography, Macro Photography, Focus Stacking, Extreme Macro.

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