The dark,almost black background area was created by placing the subject in front of a dark,shaded area about nine feet behind the plant. By jacking my shutter speed as high as it would go, to 1/500 second, and moving very close with the 180mm macro lens and the flash set to 1/8 power I allow light fall-off to work FOR me. The butterfly, being very close to my flash unit received a perfect exposure from the SB 800 flash. The flash unit's low-powered flash output of only 1/8 in manual mode falls off very,very rapidly over the appoximate 9-foot distance to the shaded background area. The result is of course, a nearly black backdrop. With the D70's 1/3 stop precision lens diaphragm settings, f/13, yields wonderfully accurate,precise exposure on this only 6 centimeter long butterfly, and also good depth of field due to basically flat-plane position of butterfly's wings and body.