One eye, one wing.

I've had rather an exciting day, in spite of being shut in by heavy rain. First, I've been testing out a new camera, a Nikon CoolPix P7000; we bought it for Laurie because he wanted something small that would fit in a pocket, so he'd always have it handy. In the field, though, he wasn't too happy with its zoom. So I'll be using it for a desk camera, now that there's sand in the lens of my poor little Sony.

I tried it out on a few dead bugs I had on hand, alternating with the Sony for comparison. And I'm happy! It can use the home-made macro lens that I made to fit the Sony, with only a little adjustment. It's fast and sharp, and zooms in closer than the Sony. It has a shoe, so it can take the big flash, which gives better coverage. I haven't tried that yet; I will soon.

I've tried to get those wonderful compound eyes of some insects many times. It never works, and I've been wondering if I should invest in one of those arm-and-a-leg cameras with an extra macro lens. Maybe I will, some day. Not now; look what the CoolPix gave me on the first trial!

Eye of a fly I found on my car.

I hadn't figured out how to set the white balance yet, so the tiny squashed fly* I worked on didn't turn out too well; the Sony did better. It picked out the detail on the one surviving wing; look at this; I've never seen veins like these before:

Each vein is feathered, and the whole wing fringed.

I don't know if it will be possible to identify the fly, since the whole front end is battered, but maybe that wing will do the trick.

And just when I was putting away the cameras and bugs, I happened to notice my spider-in-residence acting strangely. He was just starting to molt, and I got to watch the whole process from start to finish; it took about 4 hours. Story tomorrow ...

*Looks like a mosquito. Thanks for the correction, Christopher!