Who woulda' thought a carpet beetle would look like this?

[rjlittlefield]

These beetles are quite interesting -- they are the only ones I know that have wing covers that are covered with scales!

The larvae are scavengers, specializing in high protein left-overs like skin flakes and dead critters. They can wreak havoc in an insect collection. (You can trust me on this... ) The adults are fairly innocuous. My bug book says that some of them are even found on flowers.

This particular specimen turned up in my windowsill. I relocated it to what I presume is kind of its "natural environment" -- a chunk of nylon carpet -- the better to photograph.

--Rik

Technical...

These pics are from playing around with my "new" (eBay'd) Olympus Zuiko 38mm f/2.8 bellows lens, specially designed for macro and no longer being made.

This lens gives a minimum working distance of 33mm from closest point to the subject. Lots of freedom for illumination. And the thing is at its sharpest wide open, reputed to resolve 320 lines/mm on the subject. (No, I haven't measured it, and I don't intend to -- the test target would cost more than the lens!)

Stacked, of course. 0.002" at f/4 and 0.0005" at f/2.8. CombineZ5 for the first, Helicon Focus for the second.

[Wim van Egmond]

For such magnifications we can truly use the word magnificent!

Wim

[MikeBinOKlahoma]

That's why it is a carpet beetle, you know...Because it has leftover 1970s shag carpet all over it's back!

Very impressive. I see I'm gonna have to finally cave and check into this stacking stuff myself....

[Ken Ramos]

These things are or could be in my carpet?! Hmm...gotta put malathion on my grocery list or maybe some pyrethrine. Good photographs!

[rjlittlefield]

I see I'm gonna have to finally cave and check into this stacking stuff myself....

For such magnifications we can truly use the word magnificent!

Mike, it's good to see another potential convert. I have to warn you, though, this technique doesn't lend itself to spontaneity.

Wim, thanks!

There is much similarity between this setup and what Wim does with his Leitz Photar. Both lenses are optimized for these magnifications and act like microscope objectives with variable apertures. The Olympus 38mm at f/2.8 acts roughly like NA 0.15, giving maximum usable magnification of about 150X.

It's the extended depth of field that makes things marvelous, letting me open up for best resolution while still getting good DOF.

Here's a single frame. The software put together 56 of these images to make the sharp-everywhere composite.



You can see the full-resolution composite here.

--Rik