Small Treasures

Dang. What brand of camera? I might have to take the plunge. I have so much invested in Pentax boxes and lenses, plus my microscopes are all adapted to my cameras, so that I have really resisted going digital.

It's a Kodak DX6490. One feature I like is that one can fire off half a dozen exposures at roughly 1/2 second intervals by appropriately setting a switch and then just holding the button down. So one can zoom a slew, accepting the long optical lever that amplifies hand tremor, then press the button and hope that at least one exposure occurs between hand jiggles. The image you see is the best (least jiggled) of 12 taken in two sequences of 6 exposures each. One can do the monopod or tripod gig, too, of course, but I tend to forget to take the tripod along.

One of these days I'll read the manual to figure out how to get manual control of exposures. There is some limited manual control available, I'm told, though I don't know how much. I suspect that one can manually control aperture or shutter speed, but not both. (Read the manual, Richard!) This image was taken at about one meter lens-to-subject distance with the camera on automatic pilot, which set the aperture at f3.20 with 1/125 sec shutter speed in sunlight, and 238 mm focal length using just optical zoom and automatic focusing. Given that the subject is less than 3/4 of an inch tall, it ain't a bad image from a meter. I cropped the original (2304 x 1536 pixels) and created the several image sizes using LView Pro rather than the Kodak image editor. I rotated the image 90% CCW (the critter and leaf were actually facing straight down). I also enhanced the image contrast just a smidge 'cause I like the antennae! :) If anyone wants the original image I can ship it (about 400K).

RBH

Here is the original image, cropped and rotated 90 degrees CCW, but with no other image processing.

RBH

Dang. My wife Sherrie like your butterfly picture so much that she thinks we should get a DC too.

Dang. My wife Sherrie like your butterfly picture so much that she thinks we should get a DC too.

Can I post some of my micros of insects on flowers? If so, how do I do it?

Can I post some of my micros of insects on flowers? If so, how do I do it?

Dang. What brand of camera? I might have to take the plunge. I have so much invested in Pentax boxes and lenses, plus my microscopes are all adapted to my cameras, so that I have really resisted going digital.

It does look like a Celastrina spp. ... I saw the picture and I nearly screamed out "Cherry Gall Azure!" (Which is the subject of a research project I'm working on now.)

It looks somewhat similar to a Summer Azure...damn, I wish I had my TA's big book on the butterflies of Canada.

Maybe someone could venture an opinion on the identity of the wee beastie in the pictures on the bottom half of this page.

rampancy,

Here's a page with some illustrations of various Celastrina spp. I don't see my guy.
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabambc/construct-species-page.asp?sp=Celastrina-ladon

Here are two more images from my place:

http://my.sota-oh.com/~rbh/pics/naz2.jpg
Another specimen with a notched wing, but different coloration than the first one. Male and female? I dunno.

http://my.sota-oh.com/~rbh/pics/naz3.jpg
Lighter colored specimen; no wing notch. It really was about that light, in spite of the large difference between the red osier dogwood flower and the dark background trying to mess with the exposure.

RBH

Here is the original image, cropped and rotated 90 degrees CCW, but with no other image processing.