sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

This is a focus stacked image of a black yellow spotted beetle sent to me by our good friend Bill. It was an experiment of diffusion and background. The diffusion is made of two translucent plastic drink cups stacked together with a white paper towel between them. A hole is cut in the bottom of the cups to fit onto the camera lens much like that of a lens hood. A large "V" is cut into the length of the cups so that it will travel over the mounted specimen. The lighting is placed to shine in the direction of the lens so the two heads are mounted at the end of the lens at 45-degree angles pointing toward the specimen.

Hobby Lobby has their patterned colored scrapbook paper on sale for $0.25 a sheet so I bought several patterns today to use as backgrounds. This one happens to be a flower pattern although at this magnification one would never know for it only captures a very small area of the print. This is my first attempt and for those who know me by now, many more experiments will follow.

Thanks in advance to all who view and for your comments, suggestions, questions and critique.

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Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

I very much like the idea of using this sort of paper for providing a background.
This might be a four-spotted sap beetle: https://bugguide.net/node/view/1406638

newtoyou Loc: Eastport

Nice.
A full body shot, please. A number of beetle families have cleavage (damn spell check. The word typed was clavate. I have never seen a beetle with breasts).
Mark has given one possibility. The sap beetles are in the family Nitulidae.
But Nicrophorus, in the family Silphidae is another contender.
I do not remember what I sent.
Bill

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Mark, what I'm finding is that at the magnification that I use the field of view is only about a half-inch area. This is great for filling the frame with the subject but does not leave much for a background other than a bit of color.

I bought ten different papers at Hobby Lobby (clouds, flowers, several different gradients, grass). The flowers were a soft pastel watercolor pattern. I thought this would make an interesting background for several colors flowed to each other.

Well, that didn't quite happen because the field of view is so tight that it only caught one small area of color. The good news is that I can move the paper around to catch other colors and when I do a 1:1 or so macro I'll catch more of the background.

Quixdraw Loc: x

Yet another remarkable shot.

Mtn.Skipper Loc: Jerome, Idaho