Insect Photography

Happy Holidays everyone! I got an early present this year that I couldn't resist busting out and playing with today. It is an Olympus TG-3 digital camera (one of those point and shoot kinds that is also water resistant), but unlike other such cameras, this one has an auto-montage feature (Olympus calls it Focus Stacking Mode - where eight pictures are "taken from foreground to background and the areas in focus are automatically merged into one shot"). Light can be provided with the optional ring light (yep, got that too...heck it was only around $35 on Amazon!). I took the following pictures of insects collected during the Belize trip and I have to give this camera a big thumbs up. I hope you enjoy the pictures...

This is a remarkable tree hopper with the scientific name Phrictus quinquepartitus is in the family Fulgoridae and the order Hemiptera. Such a beautiful insect!!!  It is over an inch in length and with both wings spread out would measure close to three inches across.  Some more pictures are below...

 

 

 

 

This is a darkling beetle (Order Coleoptera and Family Tenebrionidae). Really love the colors of this beetle! This beetle is a little over 0.5-inches in length...

 

 

Here is a colorful weevil (a bit less than 0.5-inches in length) (Order Coleoptera, Family Curculionidae). The first picture shows the beetle with a single shot (non-auto montage) and the second shot is with the Focus Stacking mode (this way you can see the difference in focus area). Thereafter, all of the pictures are using Focus Stacking...

 

 

 

 

This scarab shimmers with iridescent colors and is about one-inch in length. Order Coleoptera, Family Scarabeidae.

 

This is another weevil (Family Curculionidae) that I also used my headlamp to illuminate. Very interesting lighting effects!

 

This is a moth that mimics wasps in appearance to avoid predators. This type of mimicry is called Batesian Mimicry where a mimic is a species that is not toxic or not noxious mimics another species (the model) that is toxic or noxious.  In this case, the moth does not have a defense mechanism (toxin or noxious) other than it's physical similarity to a wasp (that does have a strong defense mechanism).

 

 

This is one of my favorite groups of beetles called Tiger Beetles (Family Carabidae, Subfamily Cicindelinae). I supplemented the illumination on this one with my headlamp for the first photo.  This is a predatory species of beetle that is ferocious in it's predatory habits...this is quite evident by the second photo - just check out it's jaws!

 

 

This next insect is just the face-on view of a Toad Bug (Order Hemiptera, Family Gelasticoridae).  Looks like the face of something from a Science Fiction movie.  This is a very cool insect that can be found in areas near water.  They get their common name of Toad Bug because they hop on the ground like a toad.

 

The last set of photos are of an Orchid Bee (Order Hymenoptera, Family Apidae) that I collected in Belize back in 2003.  They are such beautiful bees and often have such brilliant metallic colors.