Tremendous Sluggish Movement Insect Flight Captured at Unimaginable 3,200 FPS

Explore the weird and wonderful world of insect flight photography in slow motion and watch some of the strangest insects you have ever seen take off and fly in incredible detail.

Under the direction of Dr. Adrian Smith is Ant Lab a YouTube channel dedicated to science and insect videos brought to you by the Evolutionary Biology and Behavior Research Laboratory of the North Carolina Museum of Science and North Carolina State University.

In this exceptionally slow footage, Dr. Smith set about filming the insects in flight with a Phantom Miro LC321, combined with a Laowa 60mm f / 2.8 2X Ultra Macro to see the action of these tiny animals up close. This is mounted on a macro focusing rail in order to get an exact focus on the arthropod objects.

The set consists of a mug and an acrylic platform, and Dr. Smith lights the set with an inexpensive LED light for the background, paired with a Rosco Roscolux # 116 Tough White Diffusion Gel and an expensive and very bright LED for the subject.

I’m especially in love with the footage of Painted Lichen Moth, in which Dr. Smith composes two flight sequences of the moth’s takeoff and shows that we see two angles when it drifts into the air. The way the wings gracefully bend and fold back during the up and down strokes I had never seen in real life.