''Cicindela hirticollis'' is a species of tiger beetle that is commonly found in sand bars and sandy beaches of North America. It is medium-sized, is about 2–14 mm long, and is active in the summer. The dorsal surfaces of the head, prothorax, and elytra are dark brown. The elytral markings are very light-colored cream or white. The species' common names are hairy-necked tiger beetle and moustached tiger beetle. Its population is in decline.
Similar species: Beetles
By William Bodine
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Uploaded Sep 6, 2024. Captured Sep 5, 2024 17:49 in 6 E Main St, Mesa, AZ 85201, USA.
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I used a Laowa 25 mm F2.8 ultra wide 2.5 – 5.0x macro lens on a Canon 5DMark II, mounted on a StackShot focus rail. The blue backdrop is a piece of colored paper. I surrounded the beetle with a DIY light diffuser box made of tracing paper and foamboard all placed on a lab lifter to help position it correctly and had five LED continuous lights. I used Zerene stacker to calculate (it's under tools/calculators/DOF calculator) the appropriate f-stop and effective aperture to reduce light diffraction (generally keep the effective aperture at 18 or below) and determine the 79 µm distance between each of my 71 merged images.
Finally I use a free open-source program called GIMP to remove dust spots and some light speculation. I spent a lot of time in postproduction cleaning up the spots the best I could. Posted one year ago, modified one year ago