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A or B Tray

Required Elements in Each Image

  • Header tray configuration, use C Tray for easy pinning and orginization Close up of the header part of the tray containing all metadata for the tray as a unit: species name, Expert ID label, year, a 1cm scale, color checker, and 'D09' indicating the domain. All these papers are pinned at similar heights
    • Place cm scale in same focal plane as specimens.
    • Include color calibration chart in each image.
    • Include domain label visible in frame.
    • Ensure species label is clearly visible.
    • Include expert or parataxonomist label.

Image Capture

  • Zoom into an individual beetle with the magnifying glass on the bottom right of the touch screen Image of the camera screen view with circle around the magnifying button
  • Manually focus on the specimen
  • Focus carefully on the top of the specimens, not labels or pins
  • Take test shot and review for proper exposure, focus, and framing
  • Ensure all required elements are visible in frame
  • Capture final image and verify quality before proceeding
    • To verify, zoom in on individual beetle to ensure it is clear and in focus, see example photos
EXAMPLE IMAGE: Photo looks okay from a full frame view, but when you zoom in you can see poor focus on the beetles showing blurry specimen details Photo of tray full of pinned beetle specimens; all and labels look clear. However, there is a red spotlight box coming out from a smaller red boxed beetle to zoom in, and this zoomed in beetle specimen is slightly out of focus, making traits less visible
EXAMPLE IMAGE: Example of good focus Photo of tray full of pinned beetle specimens. All beetles and labels are clear and in focus, there is a red spotlight box coming out from a smaller red boxed beetle to zoom in and highlight that beetle as clearly in focus

Metadata

Metadata for each image needs to be transcribed into a spreadsheet in addition to being in the photo itself. Use BeetleMetadata1 (column values defined on ColumnNames tab). Each image will constitute a row in the spreadsheet with a column to include:

  • imageID - copy and paste this from light lightroom Screen shot of lightroom interface with white box around the screen region where the file name can be found and the file name selected to copy
  • First two "individualIDs" and last 2 "individualIDs" in the tray (This is necessary for redundancy in case of mistranscription. If one ID is incorrect, the whole photo could be rendered unusable.)
    • In the metadata google sheets I have embedded a lot of conditional formatting so that there are visual cues of problems
      • red cells: the IndividualID is the wrong length
      • orange cells: IndividualID_1 when IndividualID_n is numerically lower than IndividualID_1, eg the box is out of order
  • Number of individuals in the tray (NumberOfBeetles).
  • Marked: Record “yes” once the header label of the unit tray has been marked with a pen to denote that imaging has occurred
  • checkedOrder: Record “yes” once you have ensured that all individualIDs are sequential.
  • Expert or paratax box (Must be explicitly labeled one way, not left blank).

  • scientificName

    Success

    ExpertOrPara, domainID, and importantly scientificName are all formatted as defined ranges that reference lists of real values (such as the species list, pulled from the API) so that there can't be any spelling errors and appear as drop downs that can be typed in, but will not fill it they are invalid values.

  • domainID

  • Photographer
  • DatePhotographed

  1. Copy this Metadata Spreadsheet Template to your Drive or use the xlsx version provided in the GitHub repo. ↩