Notes on how I shoot specimen images

Here I describe the way I make focus-stacked images of specimens, as taxonomic references. This is based on a lot of trial and error through which I learned one way to get good results. What I do is not state-of-the-art--many others produce superior results with more elaborate equipment and meticulous technique. My goals are an approach that is (reasonably) inexpensive, taxonomically useful, and easy enough to do 1000 times.

Specimens:

Occasionally I wash and blow-dry to remove pollen and the little bits of dust and hair that I would otherwise have to comb out or re-touch. I usually don’t wash, because most of my material is collected one or two at a time, not worth the extra steps.
I have a particular way I mount specimens, with taxonomy in mind. I use a bunch of pins to position legs and wings so that there is a clear view of propodeum and scopa in side view. When I have replicate low value specimens, I’ll remove the right wing for dorsal view. I will also crush the head and extract mandibles, or tear off a leg for a clear view of a trait. Choices I justify because a species ID is useful, “Andrena sp” is not.

Hardware:

I use the bargain alternative to stackshot, the wemacro rail, which works just as well.
I use a cheap xyz stage with a metal plate glued to the top; then I use magnetic “third hand” gizmos to position the pinned specimen, tweaking with the xyz stage.
For shooting a lot stuff quickly (like BeeMachine pix), I mount the insect on a bug-o-whirl, a homemade 3D printed stage—see explanatory video.
For this work, the camera body is not critical. I use one of several Canon DSLR’s. I don’t discern a quality difference between an old Rebel and a 6D.
For subjects >5mm, I use the Canon 1-5x 65mm macro lens that entomologists everwhere use, but, expensive. I also use the cheaper Laowa 100mm lens (up to 2X).
For teeny subjects, I use a 10X Nikon microscope lens on the end of a normal 200mm zoom lens. The microscope lens wins at <3mm subjects.

Lighting:

I’ve played with this a a lot. The easiest setup is a ring flash (Canon, or a cheaper alternative), shooting through a hole in diffusing material. E.g., the filmy stuff that comes with Amazon shipments. I use custom 3-D printed PETG diffusers. I arrange so that the background is either far away (when I want black background), or for gray background, a white card a few cm behind the subject. On manual mode, the exposures will be from 1/4 - 1/32. I also have a couple of off-camera flashes (Godox MF-12) if I need something other than uniform, straight-on illumination. I use these with all kinds of diffusers, like cylinders (Pringles cans) capped with tissue. Frustration is expected. I still cannot get great pix of scutal punctation.

Click any image for a larger magnification.

Background

Sam Droege and USGS use black backgrounds, and I mostly emulate this because 1) I like the aesthetic; and 2) Black is black, in every image. Gray on the other hand will vary in luminance, based on position of the background card, and sometimes from a curves layer in Photoshop.

Specimen better with black, because all of the edge hairs are light.

Specimen better on gray, because all of the edge hairs are dark.

Unintentionally dark gray--background card too distant.

Wing detail

For a given exposure, the background shouldn't affect the rendering of the specimen. But it does, most notably for the wings, which show glare with black, but not with gray - comparison at right.

Dust

Ways to eliminate dust/debris: 1) best: washing; 2) manually, combing with teeny brushes; 3) healing tools in Photoshop - before and after pix below:

Hairy edges

My technique involves erasing the pin and everything around the specimen to reveal an underlying solid color. A common problem is the case where marginal hairs are close in color to the background. In photos at right, I used a background eraser to clean the edges, but left areas of gray where the eraser would have eliminated light hairs.

Specimen mounting

I use lots of pins to position legs and wings.

Magnification

For subjects >4mm I use a Canon 65mm lens with a macro range from 1-5X. For smaller subjects, I get a better result with a 10X microscope objective.

I'm often interested in tiny details, like the spiracles of snakefly.

My sense is that for the 65mm lens, quality declines at 5X (image above).

Below: Same subject with the microscope 10X lens. Better contrast and resolution.

10X lens photos of a tiny parasitoid; detail holds up even in a tight crop.

Below: Same subject with the microscope 10X lens. Better contrast and resolution.

David Cappaert. Text and photos free of AI. Update August 12, 2026