Moth portrait

This is done with a program that adds lots of pictures focused slightly differently together. So unfortunatly the subject shouldnt move, so fast mooving insects are usually best dead or cold, but most beetles etc are ok just as they are, or with a bit of honey, it really hepls if they are alive so as they dont end up all crawled up in a ball. The lighting is just halogen unfortunatly, it is about the only thing small enough and bright enough to get close enough so as it will go between the lens and the subject (fiber optics are better because they dont cause any heat but very expencive). The distance between the lens and the subject in this case was 4.2mm. These had 4 lights around them at various distances, and a half a ping pong ball over the subject as a diffuser with holes in to take the picture through and let non diffuse light in. The camera is mounted on a microscope, in this case with a 2.5x reichert plan acro infinity corrected lense. Then it is only a case of focusing on the bit you want in focus at the rear, one in the middle and then again at the front, checking the exposure for all three. Working out what your DOF is from the lens (about a hairs width) and taking series of pictures at the right distance for each untill you have all of your subject in focus and stacking them togehter in a program called combinez to add all the pictures together and a couple of hours (depending on the speed of the PC and amount of setting changes necessary) later it is ready. There is a small tutorial on stacking here if anyone hasnt heard of it or is interested http://www.scientificillustration.net/focus_stacking.html