Laurie Knight's Photomicrography blog

Recent site updates

Published: 9th Dec 2009

As mentioned in the previous post I've been giving the site a bit of a sort out, a major one actually. The front end HTML should appear very similar to before, although with a few tweaks, but the main change was an overhaul of the back-end code which generates the site. This was a major re-write so please do let me know if you notice anything odd!

The pages should all render as valid XHTML now so the site should work on most if not all browsers. I expect IE6 will do something odd with it but users of that browser should be used to odd behaviour!

The front end tweaks include:-

RSS feed available on Blog
RSS feed available on Articles (indexed on update time so you should re-receive notice of an article if I make an update.)
New improved articles front page.
Galleries default view is latest pictures from all subcategories, previously was 'my favourites' which wasn't often updated.
New nicer looking (and XHTML valid) comments
Comment preview facility
Comment 'subject' now available
More search engine friendly links, now /gallery/bugs/1 instead of site.php?category=19
And a few more subtle changes as well!

I've also updated most of the articles so please take another look if you haven't viewed them in the last couple of days!

0 Comments so far. Post a comment

Apologies for the lack of new stuff recently

Published: 2nd Aug 2009

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, moving house is a pain and it's taken me a few months to get everything sorted out to the point where I can start shooting seriously again!

Over the next couple of months I hope to fill out the focus stacking articles, and tweak the website design, and try to shoot some more decent bug stacks...

Incidentally I have just made a few small mods to the website as well as uploading a few recent images, so please let me know by email or use the commenting system if you spot anything I've mucked up!

1 Comment so far. Post a comment

Diffusion

Published: 15th Apr 2009
Updated: 2nd Dec 2009

Diffusion is a tricky thing! I've been running some tests recently, since I encountered trouble with specular reflections shooting a Lacewing last week.

For a long time I've been using a kind of thin packing foam as diffusers. I originally got some wrapped round a new LCD monitor. This worked very nicely. Over a period of time I acquired various pieces of similar foam, and have been cutting all sorts of little flash diffusers from all these bits of foam, assuming they would all work as well...

Wrong! After someone else pointed out that foam doesn't diffuse as much as you might think, I started looking more closely at the different pieces of foam I was using. The original stuff which worked well is white to look at, you can not see through it, and it has a fairly fine 'grain'. The piece of foam I was using on the Lacewing had a very different structure. The 'bubbles' in the foam are much larger, and more transparent. Hence it was not diffusing the light as much as I wanted.

The next experiment was some paper. Kleenex tissue was advised but I was fearful of small bits of fluff coming off of tissue paper onto the specimen so my first tests were with a bit of standard printer/copier paper.

This diffuses extremely well. In fact, I think it diffuses too much!

Bee face photo, light _heavily_ diffused with copier paper

Here's a comparison shot with some foam:

Bee face photo, light more lightly diffused with thin packing foam

At full resolution there is slightly more detail visible in the hairy parts of the bee in the first shot (with the paper diffuser). However the consensus seems to be that the second shot looks better. The light is just too flat in the first image.

Of course some subjects require much more diffusion than others - for instance Beetles, particularly black Ground Beetles and Ladybirds. So I guess it's best to have a variety of diffusers available, and test diffusers on each subject before going through the whole stack!

One of these days I will get around to purchasing some proper diffusion material (e.g. from these people but I enjoy the hunt for junk that can be re-used!

2 Comments so far. Post a comment

Sunset Moth (Urania riphaeus)

Published: 13th Mar 2009
Updated: 2nd Dec 2009

I have to just put a quick post up about this moth. I purchased a specimen recently after seeing some amazing shots of the wing scales by a couple of posters at www.photomacrography.net

Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on the Sunset moth

On the taxonomy I think I am using an old Latin name for this insect, I'm trying to get clarification on this, but this moth does have several synonyms, some of which are mentioned on the Wikipedia article above.

I recommend anyone into shooting bugs with an indoor macro studio should attempt to get hold of a specimen of this moth, it is quite remarkable when magnified. I've spent a good part of three evenings shooting this insect so far and I am not remotely finished with it yet! The iridescence of the scales makes it a challenging subject to light, shoot and stack, but I like a challenge!

See the the Butterfly/Moth gallery for my best shots of Urania riphaeus so far

0 Comments so far. Post a comment

What to shoot in the middle of winter?

Published: 20th Feb 2009
Updated: 2nd Dec 2009

Okay, my first real blog post*, I'd better make it something worthwhile!

As primarily a bug/fungi shooter, what does one do in the depth of winter when there are virtually no fungi or bugs around?

Well recently I've started looking at lichen and moss, simply because there is nothing else out there!

Surprisingly both of these subjects can be quite interesting when viewed at high enough magnification...

Here's an example of a part of a Moss plant, the tip of the spore capsule

Due to the size, this subject required focus stacking to get detail over any depth. However while researching what the this moss was, I came across some wonderful moss galleries at the British Bryological Society website - page 1, page 2, page 3. These have inspired me to try to shoot some nice moss shots out in the field as well!

Edited to add; There are now some wild moss shots in the Mosses section of the Plants gallery

* There were a lot of test posts while I was putting the blog code together!

2 Comments so far. Post a comment