These are highlights from a set I recently shot of a Red Admiral butterfly. I collected it dead along a local roadside, and this is how I've sourced almost all of my insect specimens in recent years. They're focus stacked composites, each containing several hundred exposures. The magnification is 23.5X, and the horizontal field of view is approximately 1mm. Some of them are slightly cropped, but most of these use most of the available frame so you can compare the relative size of the different types of scales, or at least get an idea of it. I shot them with continuous light from a pair of LED floodlights positioned next to my microscope's stage.
The full set is on
this page. I selected from it for this post, but there are quite a few more there if you enjoy these.
The Red Admiral,
Vanessa atalanta has a truly incredible diversity of wing and body scales compared to many other species I've examined. The undersides of their wings appear to have finely mottled patterns of greys, taupe, and black, but on closer examination those soft Earth tones are comprised of purple and red and metallic gold scales, like you can see below.
Vanessa cardui, commonly known as the Painted Lady butterfly has a similar richness of colour and micro-morphology. There are few butterflies I enjoy more on these scales.
Post #1 by Philoslothical
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