Rainbow Scarab, face1, silver spring, md 2013-12-31-14.48.26 ZS PMax Panorama2 (11678975526)

Experimental Shot. One of the problems with macro photography is that sometimes your subject is too big. In this case this lovely very large scarab beetle would not fit in the field of view of my MPE65. I could switch to a 100mm lens but I would then lose a lot of lovely detail. Fortunately I have just purchased a nice cast iron laboratory jack stand which lets me raise and lower the specimens using a knob rather than re-positioning them. For this shot I took 3 sets of stacked shots and then stitched them together in PTGui. Very quick and dirty and if you look close you can see 2 areas where the join was imperfect, but it has a lot of promise. This version is 7000 and some pixels on the long side and there is no reason I can't stitch together an entire monster beetle. If one had the proper plotter you would then create a photograph several feet on a side.

This is Phanaeus vindex brought into the lab by my High School buddy now entomologist Wayne White, found in a swimming pool drain in Silver Spring Maryland

Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200, link to a .pdf of our set up is located in our profile