Snout moth by night

The second iteration of my go-to lens—a 55-200mm Nikkor zoom—is in the process of giving up the ghost, so while I agonized over what to replace it with, a recent order of several other camera toys, er, accessories, arrived and, of course, had to be played with, OK, field tested. This night-time shot of some kind of snout moth—a precise identification is going to require a lot more study and, I suspect, expert help—was made possible by a small, on-camera LED video light and a bolt-on LCD screen magnifying hood. Both of these devices were purchased in order to enable my DSLR and its keeper to effectively shoot videos: the light so I could capture amphibians after dark without needing to shine a flashlight on the critters; the hood so I could see and focus better in "live view" video mode. To test the new tools, I used my ancient, circa-late 1960s, Nikkor micro lens, a pre-automatic spectacular collection of glass that is rather hard to use, given my equally ancient eyes, which have become increasingly dependent on such modern niceties as autofocus. Still, the results demonstrate that, while I debate over replacement lenses, I can manage quite well with the old stuff, supplemented by the new tools.