The Centre for Biodiversity Genomics conducts field trips to museums to harvest DNA from identified species to help build the DNA barcode library. In some cases, we are unable to borrow the specimens, so instead we do all of the processing on site. While at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, USA, we worked on the Diptera collection and took digital photographs of every specimen to be sampled for DNA barcoding. We use a Canon SLR camera set up with specimens imaged on a white background.
