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Thrifty Thursday: the honeycomb, the flashlight, and the iPhone

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500.

[iPhone 4S - $330]

The recipe is simple:


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1. Place comb upright so that both sides are exposed.

2. Point a flashlight to spotlight the comb.

3. Place the phone camera on the other side of the comb and take a picture.

The iPhone's small lens confers a distorted, almost fisheye perspective to the scene, while backlighting from the flashlight reinforces the effect. The hardest part, true story, was retrieving the comb without getting stung.

 

Alex Wild is Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies the evolutionary history of ants. In 2003 he founded a photography business as an aesthetic complement to his scientific work, and his natural history photographs appear in numerous museums, books and media outlets.

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