Lily Leaf Beetle

This handsome little beasty is a lily leaf beetle, an invasive insect from Europe that has chewed its way through the lilies of Montreal and New England. It’s been called the ‘scourge of Cambridge’. Apparently the University of Rhode Island has been experimenting with parasitoid controls — i.e., another species that, in the beetle’s natural range, uses (and kills) the beetle as part of its life cycle. Ichneumon wasps are a type of parasitoid, though they wouldn’t touch these beetles.

I’m still very happy with the flash bracket I used to take this picture, except for two things: the weight at the front makes it difficult to stabilise, and I haven’t found a good way to diffuse the light yet.

I’m considering picking up a 270EX or 430EX II to replace the Vivitar 285HV I’m using now. Both weight considerably less, and I expect E-TTL II would be helpful for macro work. The 270EX is tiny and cheap, but it’s not terribly advanced. I’m also not sure if I would get the flash duration I want from a weak flash. When you lower the power on a flash, what you’re really doing is lowering the amount of time the flash fires for, and faster flash pulses will freeze motion, like camera shake or wind, better than slow ones. So my thinking is that despite the extra weight of the 430EX II, it’s a more powerful flash, and that might let me use a lower power setting than the 270EX or Vivitar 285HV. But naturally, both flashes cost money, which I don’t have much of.

As for the diffusion problem, I’m still brainstorming. The problem is that I’m getting hot spots that lose all their detail — look at the white glare on the lily leaf beetle’s carapace. I’m also getting it on compound eyes and legs. I’ve got the flash in pretty close and firing it at 1/16th, so it’s about as soft as it’s going to get on its own. We’ll see about this; I don’t have a good idea for it yet.