Without ever having used the original bugstage, I knew it wasn't what I wanted. A brief conversation with a friend I usually collect with, convinced me I was on the wrong track. So back to the drawing board and try again.

This design was to be more flexible .... fit different cameras, allow different angles, allow more natural light and accommodate taking stereo pictures as well. The first sketches showed it to be larger than I desired for transporting but fine for actually taking pictures, so a bit of fiddling and I made it "collapsible" for storage and carrying.

My friend had a larger "dish" to use and gave me one. The only problem with it was that it had a very small rim. I thought I could work around that by drilling a snug fitting hole in a DVD coaster. The same home made metric scales were glued on the outside bottom of the dish and some white foam rubber sheet overlaid as a background.

Later, I was really surprised to find the DVD ring had de-laminated apparently due to the small forces introduced. As we're coming up on the first collecting, a quick work around is to screw three popsicle sticks to the underside of the table for the dish to sit on. Later I'll try to find another, more suitable material to make a more suitable brim.

Here's a picture of the new bug stage folded for transport:

And here it is, ready for action:

Here bug, here bug ... come and get your portrait taken.