[Faces] A spider slayer...

realjax wrote in post #11073632
Thanks everyone for the nice comments.
The wasp was dead yes. Found it dying in my garden the other day. It had been in some battle I guess for it's stinger was still fully extended (I plan to take some shots of this as well btw).
I had it mounted on a small tripod then, like so .....
Used a second tripod to hold the camera and bellows, and a third was used for the flash.

Thanks so much for showing the ingenious set-up. Very much looking forward to seeing the shots of the sting

I've made a stack of the abdomen showing the stinger last night. Needs a bit of cleanup and will post it in the next few days.

Great stack! Thanks so much for photo of your specimen rig I was pleased to see the micrometer - I just thought of that and I am trying to get hold of a micrometer to build some kind of (cheap!) fine tune platform - did you build this - any advice?

It's actually the combination of an actuator (the micrometer) and a linear stage. The latter is not very visible in the shot here but basically this is a high precision ball bearing sliding table of which the actuator moves the top part.
They are extremely expensive ( > 400 dollar, excluding actuator) new but can be obtained for less then 40 dollar through Ebay for example. The one used on my rig is al very small one. ( table measurements 3 * 3 centimeters). It was too small for my initially intended purpose, but came in handy for the specimen setup.

Note: the little tripod in this shot is far from stable, the slightest touch and you can spend the next few minutes realigning the whole setup.

That's awesome! thks for sharing.....

For additional stability: One of my ideas that works quite well on a glass table like you appear to be using is to use one of those glass lifters with two suction cups - about £5 new on ebay. I use mine with a superclamp. But don't use overnight as I did as the suction does eventually wear off!

Martin Dixon wrote in post #11088078
.. use one of those glass lifters with two suction cups..

Sounds interesting. Downside is that this is a little too stable I want to be able to move the specimen around as well. The fiddling with a full size tripod is big enough of a pain as it is already, it's easier if I can move the specimen in front of the lens too .
I actually already have all the components for an alternative, a tilt table. I think this combined with the mini stage will suit my purpose best

Will post pics when it is finished. (might take some time because the process also involves some pouring of molten lead )

Lead is pretty easy stuff to deal with - many moons ago I used to make simple castings using wooden moulds (these do burn a bit!) but the lead was simply melted in an ordinary tin can with a slightly bent rim to form a lip for pouring. I can't remember how I lifted this, but I think I just used pliers(!) obviously you need to take a lot of care - test without lead first. Obviously it will be heavy and hot!!!

Good luck!

Amazing. The image popped out of my monitor.

great shots.. awesome detail

This has got to be one of the best pictures I have seen. How do you control 100 incremental moves towards such a small subject?

Beauty of a stack and interestingly not too much of that harsh boundary between blurr and sharp if one looks at the antenna. One thing that (to me) distracts though is the way the light has worked over the majority of the face - giving that strong white shine to the chitchin and eye - you might want to have a look here:
http://www.juzaforum.c​om …viewtopic.php?f​=2&t=12633

at the concave flash diffuser method. I've done some light testing of my own and gotten results like this with a very basic approach:
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=949211

The results do seem to need a bit of work though that is different to regular flash lighting (far as I can tell you have to play around more with the midtones to get things to look "sharp" and well defined).

Thanks Overread!

I am aware of the concave diffuser solution and will probably experiment with it at some point as well. The thing with a stack this size is that it is almost impossible to know what the effect of the light setup will be untill the very end, when the stack is finished. The insect here, the wasp, has a shiny surface and to be honest I quit like the way it has come out. Sure, its obvious, but not blown anywhere and it adds to the depth perception, Diffusing, IMHO should not be taken to such a level that it produces too flat an image.

Very true and I also know what you mean about the problem with stacks changing things as you add them up - I've several times encountered it where the shots alone are ok but when stacked up end with horrible overexposed spots.

how u find jml 21mm and
how u fitted with ur cam?