Inspired by Mike C.
Last edited Tue May 16, 2023, 06:34 PM - Edit history (1)
Not quite there yet but man, this is hard. The little details of getting the legs just right and then not having them move back is frustrating. Of course I have no idea what it is but it was hanging out on a thistle and very lethargic like it was stoned on something.
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There was a first time for him too.
I certainly wouldn't want to attempt to do this. But I do think your photo is a great first foray.
I killed it by putting it in the freezer for 4 hours. Brought to room temp in the sealed container to prevent condensation. Set it up as you described with pin holding it above a white background.
I used the in-camera focus bracketing for 100 exposures. I'm still sorting through how the OM moves the focus point. Helicon stacking software did the stack.
The issues I see are that the lighting isn't even enough--perhaps a ring light to evenly light it from the camera's eye. Another issue is the legs being askew. I could get 5 of the six legs just right but every time I tried to position the middle right leg it slowly went back to curled under AND I moved the other two legs on that side 
. Lastly the background is a bit underexposed so it isn't a clean white.
If I missed anything please comment.
Oh and the original is much more crisp and sharp than what shows on the screen. I've not had that issue with other uploads so maybe PostImage is having a bad day? Or me?
About the beetle itself; it's about a cm long and had it's head buried in the purple thistle bloom. I could pull it out but it seemed stoned or immobilized like it was sedated. It eventually began to move before I froze it. Then I found out how unstable I was trying to move just one leg!! Too much coffee, whiskey and years . . .
I don't think it's possible with this lighting. The white card background will always be a bit grayer than the subject if it's lit by the same light source as the subject. To achieve a clean white bg without blowing out the specimen highlights you need to move the background much further behind the specimen, both to insure it's completely out of focus (so no visible details in the bg) and independently lit. Independently lighting the bg is key. It might require more than one bg light to achieve a clean look from edge to edge. Allan Walls has a video about this. It's tricky.
Another possibility is to use an unfocused backlit screen behind the specimen. A backlit piece of translucent white plastic or even paper might work, or a laptop display, but halos and other distortions around edge details can be difficult. And backlighting the background will still show unevenness of lighting unless it's absolutely even from corner to corner.
There is an easier way. Well, I'm not sure it's necessarily easier, but it works well. Drop out the background with Photoshop. This actually accounts for the majority of my PS use in the insect photos, other than some exposure, contrast, and sharpening adjustments. I use the Select and Mask panel to mask out the entire white background, which I replace with a white fill layer behind the specimen. Instant clean background, although it's not very "instant." Photoshop's Select and Mask tool is incredibly useful for creating clean edges around the finest of hairs. It does have a learning curve to get the best results. Or maybe that's just me. 
Rather than make this a really long reply, I'll just leave it at that for now and if you want to discuss it later I'm happy to.
Another advantage of this is that the actual specimen is cut out as a PS selection. Actually it's a copy of the original layer, but with a layer mask added to drop the background. Adding a white fill layer below it gives our clean white background, and adjustments above it act only on the subject itself, rather than the subject + background. This can be really useful. For example, adjustments only affect the subject, and never need to be layer masked to the specimen for global adjustments. I hope that makes sense....
I'll have to try this sometime.
The new masking capabilities in PS and LR are amazing.
