Insect camera trap
In 2017 I decided to go for a different approach for capturing insects by building an insect trap to capture insects during flight. Unfortunately, for various reasons, it took five years before I was able to test the set-up.
In all honesty, there are some drawbacks with my homemade system. The sensitivity of the IR detectors I used on this system are not as great and precise as the laser sensors that are used on professional versions of this kind of insect camera traps. Also, the shutter lag is short on this camera, but still long enough so that the bugs sometimes have managed to fly away a bit after triggering the sensor, which is why they are not always in the middle of the photos. Lastly, strong sunlight disturbs the IR sensors, so they don't trigger the system in bright sunlight.
But with a bit of practice, pictures of flying bugs are obtained anyway, which is what I was aiming for. Also, because the location of the sensors on the system shows me where the focus of the lens is, I can also manually push the shutter when I see that a bug is in the right place. So the images you see here are actually made with both methods.
Insect camera trap pictures
PicturesInsect camera trap build
Insect camera trap build