I've finished my set of this species, and I figured I'd share the highlights here as followup to my other thread. I had fun making these. These stacks are all in the 200 to about 750 exposure range. I lit them with a pair of studio strobes at close range.



A tighter portrait of a specimen absent the head injury of the other one. I include damage and flaws I find on specimens in many of my photos because these things are real, but I like to select for some that are just pretty to look at, too.



This is the edge of one of the small orange spots on the hind wing, dorsal view.



Most of a solitary swallowtail foot. Sometimes the specimen lends itself to composition more than others, and this one was really pushing it, in terms of fitting in the frame. I'm pleased with the result, even if it's not perfect. Their feet are so alien compared to the feet of so many other critters. I wonder if they actually pierce the surface of plants and flowers when they land.

If you'd like to see them all on one page, they can be found here.

[Philoslothical]

I struggled with the light and it needs a good cleaning(found a lady bug carcass inside the 10x lens) but here the old thing is. It's got a 10x 43x and 97x and 10x ep's. The latter two lenses are oil immersion. I had forgotten the deck light gatherer has a lens and a big multi-blade(12?) iris to control the light - though that's meant for translucent micro biomes and so less useful for solid stuff like this. the Y axis traverse knob wasn't engaging but I realized it was just loose at the gear and fixed it. The knob at the bottom adjusts the light projector. It even has a dial to adjust the binoc width and diopter screw on one of them. Your photos Inspired me to give this a try one day. Thanks!

Looks good to me! I bet the fine focus on it is awesome. A few thoughts...

You're right that the condenser won't be useful for reflected light work, but it's not a bad thing that it's there. Sometimes I use it for backlighting thin specimens. Most of the time you can just ignore it and use whatever LED lights you decide to set up pointed at the stage.

The two oil immersion objectives won't be useful for this stuff either (obviously), but this way you have two ports to fill with hand picked objectives better suited to photography, and there is a wide variety available for all budgets. Be sure to check the thread diameter your microscope accepts before shopping. I've seen plenty of adapters available for smaller objectives, like to mount an m25 in an m26 turret, so that's a possibility, too. I can't tell by looking which size yours uses. When mixing or adapting objectives you also need to consider the tube distance they need, if they're not "infinity" objectives.

You might want to get a different eyepiece for photography, too, because it's quite possible that yours are old enough to have become hazy, and because there are probably eyepieces better suited, with wider fields of view. There are also ocular eyepieces designed specifically for photography but they're less common.

Last thing, the angle of the eyepieces doesn't look too severe, it's nearly vertical. I think this will put less stress on your camera mount and/or filter thread than one that's more horizontal. If it can be adjusted, use it as close to vertical as possible.

And off on a tangent, it strikes me that the people who designed and built this microscope had no inkling that anybody might even be able to do focus stacking in the future. It's crazy how fast we progressed technologically, but it's a testament to their design that good microscopes routinely outlive us in their usefulness. Thanks for your comments. There's nothing here more pleasing to me than when I see people taking a greater interest in this stuff, because I enjoy it so much.

[blues_hawk]

Looks good to me! I bet the fine focus on it is awesome. A few thoughts...

You're right that the condenser won't be useful for reflected light work, but it's not a bad thing that it's there. Sometimes I use it for backlighting thin specimens. Most of the time you can just ignore it and use whatever LED lights you decide to set up pointed at the stage.

The two oil immersion objectives won't be useful for this stuff either (obviously), but this way you have two ports to fill with hand picked objectives better suited to photography, and there is a wide variety available for all budgets. Be sure to check the thread diameter your microscope accepts before shopping. I've seen plenty of adapters available for smaller objectives, like to mount an m25 in an m26 turret, so that's a possibility, too. I can't tell by looking which size yours uses. When mixing or adapting objectives you also need to consider the tube distance they need, if they're not "infinity" objectives.

You might want to get a different eyepiece for photography, too, because it's quite possible that yours are old enough to have become hazy, and because there are probably eyepieces better suited, with wider fields of view. There are also ocular eyepieces designed specifically for photography but they're less common.

Last thing, the angle of the eyepieces doesn't look too severe, it's nearly vertical. I think this will put less stress on your camera mount and/or filter thread than one that's more horizontal. If it can be adjusted, use it as close to vertical as possible.

And off on a tangent, it strikes me that the people who designed and built this microscope had no inkling that anybody might even be able to do focus stacking in the future. It's crazy how fast we progressed technologically, but it's a testament to their design that good microscopes routinely outlive us in their usefulness. Thanks for your comments. There's nothing here more pleasing to me than when I see people taking a greater interest in this stuff, because I enjoy it so much.

Thank's for the tips!