Tough Stacker

I've had a very quick play with the TG-6 today. There was a bit of charge on the camera, and I just wanted to get a feel for the in-camera stacking mode - the key feature I was keen to see working. I used out of the box settings with the following exceptions: I turned the knob to the microscope mode and chose stacking, I set the LED to be ON to use with the LED Light Guide that I bought to go with the camera, I adjusted the stacking to the max x10 images and I set the stacking delay to 2 seconds (seeing as the camera doesn't appear to allow the use of the self-timer delay whilst in stacking mode). I set the camera on a tripod and set-up the daylight lamps that I usually use for anything indoors. Tripod and lighting are key to decent images whenever possible.

Anyway, I decided to grab a couple of likely specimens out of my box and point the camera at them. A large-ish Tachinid and a small-ish weevil. I had the camera on the max x4 optical zoom for these, but the camera was not as close to the subject as could be possible. The following images are not cropped, just re-sized and edited in the same way I do for all my images. 

Linnaemya picta - can't get that DoF with my usual set-up

Neliocarus nebulosus - in all it's roundness

These are not finely-honed executions, they're first efforts without much effort.

First impressions are that:

• the in-camera stacking is great!
• getting the camera in position and enough light onto the subject is going to be the tricky - it's like going back to the Coolpix 4500 I used a decade ago in that respect
• the LED Light Guide doesn't really offer much - not convinced by that at the moment

I joked yesterday that I wouldn't bother reading the manual - I didn't need to as it doesn't even come with one, you have to go online and download a PDF.

I will have a proper play with it in due course. I will try for some comparative shots of a subject using the TG-6 and P600 + Raynox, and I'll take some shots with different camera settings to see what comes out best.

Bug Eyed

Been through most of the bits I collected at Altar Stones, and have IDs. The 'Sitona' type weevil with massive eyes that I mentioned yesterday turned out to be a new one for me ....

Neliocarus nebulosus

I also ended up with another Anthobium type, though this one looks good for A. unicolor.

And a small Carabid proved to be Bradycellus verbasci - nice to see one out in the wild rather than piled up in the moth trap. I decided to have another go at carding, seeing as I had the specimens albeit they were all significantly smaller than the first lot I tried. I'd had a read on Mark Telfer's website and decided in for a pound ....

Slightly better attempts I reckon, aside from the badly snipped card (which I can re-snip a bit) and the keen-eyed will note a blob of glue on the Bradycellus that I hope I can remove - it doesn't look so obvious without flash. I've ordered some proper mounting boards and think with a few more goes I can get somewhere near presentable!

Also amongst the specimens was this ladybird.

Rhyzobius litura

The bugs proved to be Nabis ferus, more Drymus sylvaticus and Peritrechus lundii nubilus.

One that I can't ID at all so far is this moth caterpillar - proleg arrangements suggests Geometridae but no idea which, and it's not eating the grass I found it in so it's a catch-22 - need to rear to ID, can't rear without ID ....