April 29th, 2010 — 

When we completed development on our micro-resolution process here at FineLine, I wanted to take a photo that would capture the capabilities of the new process, and incorporate a scale reference that was fresh and interesting. The use of a fingertip or coin for scale reference is nice, but has been a bit overdone in trade journals, in my opinion. So I thought “how about a bug? That should stop someone from flipping the page past our ad!” So what kind of bug? Not a mosquito or spider – too menacing. And many other bugs are too big. How about a friendly ant? My mind set on it, I went about getting it done. For the part, I chose a fully-detailed chess set on a board measuring 1cm square. With pieces having a diameter of approximately 1mm, the features on them were very tiny.

Since we first published our photograph of a micro-resolution chess board with an ant on top of it I have had several people ask me how it was done. I have had to photograph lots of small features on small parts over the years, and have developed some tips that have worked well. But with the added twist of the ant thrown in, I had to dig around to find tips on photographing them. Here I will document the approach taken, broken down by topics:

• Lights
• Camera
• Action!

Lights

Light is a crucial component in any photography, and it is especially important for macro (closeup) work. A good strong flash or strobe is the way to get lots of light, and it has the added benefit of freezing the action and giving you a crisp image. The built-in flash on most cameras — yes, even on expensive SLR cameras – doesn’t have that much power, are too “harsh”, and are not pointed properly to give you a nice shot without distracting shadows. So, I always use a remote flash, and some sort of diffuser to keep it from appearing as a point source. See the setup below.

Notice that there is a cable running to a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight with a homemade diffuser on it (a piece of printer paper). The flash lights up the paper, and the paper then lights up the subject more uniformly. In this case, it provides lighting from beneath (that is a translucent white plastic piece that the subject part and ants are on) as well as diffuse light from the side, giving just a hint of a shadow on the plastic substrate.

Camera

I have done all my photography work using a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera body, which has a 6.1 megapixel imager. It has proven to be a very versatile unit, although there are nice features in more recent introductions from Nikon and others, and better resolution as well. I perch the camera atop a very sturdy tripod so that it keeps the focus in the right spot, and avoids vibrations. The lens that I use for closeup work is a Nikkor 60mm micro lens. To control the camera, I use a remote setup from my Dell laptop, running Nikon Capture software. This gives me two really nice benefits: (1) I can snap the photo with a mouseclick, totally eliminating any camera shake that could blur the tiny features of the part, or the hair on the ant’s leg, and (2) it downloads the image immediately and presents it for my approval (or, as is most often the case, disapproval.)

Action!

Finally, to the actors. I went online and found a blog written by a nature photographer about how to photograph ants. He had some great tips, and the one that I made effective use of was to use some honey to get their attention. Then, online again I found a business that sells ants for ant farms. I ordered two tubes of Western Harvester ants and they arrived in a couple of days.

With actors, a part and an idea, I went about establishing the setup. I placed the chess board in the center of the white plastic substrate, and adjusted the lighting and focus so that I would get a good shot even while imaging through a petri dish, which I used to keep the ants captive. When I was comfortable with the light, focus, exposure and composition I was ready for the ants. To get their attention, I took the tip of a pin and used it to put a tiny spot of honey behind the rook chess piece at the right-most corner of the chess board. Then, I opened the tube of ants and let two of them scamper out and onto the substrate, quickly dropping the petri dish over them and the part to keep them contained. To my amazement, within two seconds I snapped this first shot:

He went right to the honey, thought about it for a moment, but then decided it would be best to figure out how to escape BEFORE lunch. In another two minutes or so, as one of them was transitioning from one side of the petri dish to the other, he ran across the top of the chessboard and I captured him right in the middle:

With the raw images in hand, I used the Nikon software to adjust colors and contrast a tad, and eliminate a couple of dust specs. Then I sent it off to the really creative folks (Liaison Design here in Raleigh, NC) to develop an ad that might capture some readers or viewers. They have done great work for us in the past, and kept it up with this one.

With the photo session behind them, our actors were ready for retirement. I went to PetSmart and picked up a nice retirement home for them in the way of a gel-type ant farm. The gel provides nutrition, water and a place to tunnel for the ants, and provides great entertainment for us here at FineLine, since they are our first and only pets.