Six thousand long horse is a bunch of money , but it ’s pocket-sized variety compared tothe Mary Leontyne Price of many professional television camera kits .
That ’s whythis instructionalpost from Alex Wild caught my eye . Wild is gifted photographer , and his subjects are mostly louse ( we ’ve featured his work on io9 onmultipleoccasions ) , which have good sense ; he ’s also an entomologist . Recently , Wild transition from his line of work as a independent photographer to a raw spear as Curator of Entomology at University of Texas in Austin . When he started at his new job , one of his first orders of business was to establish a professional - grade photography outfit on a budget :
Scientific tomography is constitutional to modern museum curation , and the first project I take on on reaching was to build up an inexpensive imaging scheme for the UT insect collection . Specifically , we needed something capable offocus - stackingtiny content for artificially extended depth of field . Our modest budget of $ 6k was enough for a rig with the flexibility to capture louse from the size of a large butterfly down to the scales on their wings .
The essence of the trucking rig is simple . It ’s a received digital camera with macro lens system , mounted on aCognisys motorize focus rail , bolted to a copy stall . The camera is tethered to a computer , and the image are processed using mutual focus - stacking and image editing software .
harmonize to Wild , the full apparatus can be build in a day from off - the - ledge parts , and looks like the rig at the top of this military post . Over at Scientific American , he ’s offer the full list of components used , their terms , and radio link to where you could take hold of them for yourself . He ’s even included assembly instruction . Go hold back it out .
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