Sunshine at Miramar beach

This is a super macro of a fly that was walking back and forth along the window sill in my shed. He must have been there a long time as was pretty tired because he was stumbling as he walked and was easy to catch.

I used the C5050Z with it's wireless remote, an AC adapter I got on eBay for about $19 (to insure the batteries were not going to be a problem) and with an achromatic triplet that was removed from the guts of an old Sigma Zoom-Master lens that I bought about 10 yrs ago on eBay for about $30 (thanks to Jens Birch's guidance at the time). The camera was on a cheap focus rail I got on eBay for $12. My original attempt had lighting problems because for good focus the lens needs to be about .250 -.375 inches (6-9mm) from the subject, pretty much blocking all ambient light. Since I was alone with one hand on the remote and the other holding a flashlight I was able to light only one side and it was difficult to control. The result was poor.

So I placed the fly under an cheap Amscope stereo microscope that had an adjustable LED ring light. I removed the microscope eyepiece and used the camera with the triplet lens attached as the eyepiece and the ring-light set low illumination

This is a stack of 47 photos.

Thanks to Jens Birch for his guidance 10 yrs ago Thanks to Steve Wander for recently replacing the capacitor, as without it's memory, the camera was not very convenient to use - especially for stacking.