Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Bumble Bee on Mexican Zinnia

Today just one image I wanted to share, a Bumble Bee on a Mexican Zinnia (?) flower - how boring? Not really, since both exhibit their UV patterns; have a look....

Also these two shots were done using extention tubes and a Baader 2" U-filter for the UV shot using my Nichia 365nm UV Led lamp/flash. Now here they come assembled into one image and the UV image somewhat matched in color to enhance the UV pattern:



Notice the detail the UV shot has in comparison to the white light image. Quite easy to understand actually, since the (theoretical) resolution of that lens used rises by a factor of 546nm/365nm = ca 1.5x (if we use the median for white light).

So since I had a feeling someone might ask how a bee might see that situation, here my sythesized bee vision version for your viewing pleasure:




Stay tuned, more will follow on that fascinating subject...

More info on this very interesting field may be found on my site http://www.pbase.com/kds315/uv_photos