In the scope of a digitization project at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, we developed a new method to facilitate digitization of museum specimens. The new method had to be relatively cheap and fast. These requirements were met by use of a compact camera with focus stacking functionality which allows the camera to take multiple images at different focus depths. Afterwards, these sets of images are combined to form one picture in which the entire specimen is in focus. The development of cheap and fast methods is important because most museums face a shortage of personnel and infrastructure to keep up with digitizing their ever-growing collections. Our method is currently being used in project Chrysomel’ID with the valuable help of several volunteers.

The results of our research have been published in the open access journal ZooKeys. The pdf file can be found on our publication page.