Within the last 15 years, digital technology has revolutionized
photography. Not only are individual images easier and cheaper to
produce, but the now 'taken-for-granted' internet allows literally
billions of people access to information-- including images, routinely,
and on a world-wide basis. These two facts, ease of production and
world-wide access, facilitated and in a sense necessitated the
production of a website such as this.
Photography in the field was accomplished using a
Cannon® Elan II film camera and Sensia® 100 Film by Fuji. Slides
were digitized using a Nikon® LS1000 35mm film scanner and cropped/
sized in Adobe Photoshop® 6.0.
Insect images at this site have been produced with three
different digital technologies:
Orthoptera images were produced
using a Hewlett-Packard® Scanjet 3C flatbed scanner. Chilled
specimens were placed directly on the scanning surface and covered with a unit pinning tray (size B). This
procedure enabled the capture of the often
evanescent colors found in living specimens while the unit tray provided a
uniform background color. Final images were color corrected (where
necessary) with direct comparison to the specimen and using Adobe
Lepidoptera images were taken with a Nikon Coolpix® 5000
digital camera and color corrected (as necessary) using Adobe Photoshop®
6.0. Images were halved, placed on a uniform background, and
standardized to show a right side of an image. This allows for high
resolution images with less redundant data. Other larger insects
were photographed using this system.
Smaller insects (most Coleoptera, Heteroptera,
Hymenoptera, and others) were photographed using an Auto-Montage® computer
imaging system (Syncroscopy Corp., a division of Synoptics Ltd.) with a
JVC® KY-F750 digital camera and Leica® M420 binocular dissection
microscope. Images were color corrected (where necessary) by
comparison to the actual specimen and placed on a standardized background
using Adobe Photoshop® 6.0.
Unless otherwise noted, images were taken by Gerald Fauske, Hymenoptera by
Patrick Beauzay, and Corixidae by Paul Tinerella.