Cosmorrhyncha, m, guts

This is a shot of a Tortricid Moth from the Cosmorrhyncha genus ... the genitalia and perhaps the abdomen, though this is not absolutely clear to me. The slide was given to me by John W. Brown from the natural history Museum at the Smithsonian as an experiment to see if I could get a good shot of a slide mounted specimen. In this particular case the trick was to shine one flash head up into our standard Styrofoam box and shine the other flash had directly onto the back of the slide at a slight angle and rather than use a black background add a light-colored background (in this case a chunk of white plasticine clay). I was particularly impressed by the detail in the genitalia, quite beautiful really. Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200. USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.