Insects...

[Dr. Harout]

Nice image and... nice linking, Mick.

[Wildieswife]

Nice image and... nice linking, Mick.

I concur Nice even DOF /angle positioning of one of those awkwardly long insects

Pat

[aster]

Hi Mick,

I think this is one of the most beautiful insect shots I've seen on this forum yet and the composition works nicely with the particular shape of the body. Encylopedia-photo quality. : )

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

[MickH]

Hi Mick,

I think this is one of the most beautiful insect shots I've seen on this forum yet and the composition works nicely with the particular shape of the body. Encylopedia-photo quality. : )

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

What A kind thing to say - I'm very flattered and I thank you.

Just in case you are interested it's a picture of a male white legged damselfly Platycnemis pennipes

MickH

[Wildieswife]

A winter cheat – from a butterfly house.



From last year……..Love on a farm Gate. Common darters. There weren't so many dragons about as usual last year



‘Mellinus arvensis’ (Field Digger wasp about 1cm) with food for her as yet unlaid eggs/larvae. She paralises the fly (can be various kinds) and she carries it about/shakes it whilst hold of its tongue until she knows it isn’t parasitized. I have so many of this behaviour. Morbid or what?? I find insects fascinating. Probably my favourite genre.



Pat

[Birma]

Weird and wonderful! Great pictures Pat

No alien created in sci-fi is stranger than the reality of our own insect world.

[MickH]

Pat

Hi Pat,
Do you mind me asking if the above is a crop from part of the file? If so could you please tell me how much of a crop it is?

Sorry if I've missed the data but I'd also like to know what lens you used. My reason is that I'm on the lookout for a medium to long zoom with excellent close focus capability. I also want excellent sharpness and bokeh. (Not asking much am I!)

MickH

[Wildieswife]

Hi Pat,
Do you mind me asking if the above is a crop from part of the file? If so could you please tell me how much of a crop it is?

Sorry if I've missed the data but I'd also like to know what lens you used. My reason is that I'm on the lookout for a medium to long zoom with excellent close focus capability. I also want excellent sharpness and bokeh. (Not asking much am I!)

MickH

Sorry not to have replied sooner. The image you're interested in was cropped to around half the size of the original. It's not always the case - I was hold of the leaf edge (it helps with 'macro sway') and she crawled onto my finger. This subsequent one is uncropped. You can see that, as the Focal Length has decreased, the DOF has become more crucial/shallower and the fly's eye is in focus whilst the wasp's is not - which is why I wouldn't choose this one.

As with all photography it's always a juggling act and often a series of compromises.



You say - "My reason is that I'm on the lookout for a medium to long zoom with excellent close focus capability" -

If you want images with detail you need to use a macro and get close rather than rely on a zoom to do this. Getting close gets better detail - with birds, too. You soon learn the art of 'stalking' insects and these days I find on occasion I could do with a 60mm rather than a 90mm!

Gear used - A77 and Tamron f2.8 90mm Macro lens. I'd recommend this Macro lens to anyone - does good portraits/product shots, too.

Shot at -
ISO 320 : f8 : 1/125 sec

Hope this is of help and happy 'togging'!

Pat

[MickH]

Sorry not to have replied sooner. The image you're interested in was cropped to around half the size of the original. It's not always the case - I was hold of the leaf edge (it helps with 'macro sway') and she crawled onto my finger. This subsequent one is uncropped. You can see that, as the Focal Length has decreased, the DOF has become more crucial/shallower and the fly's eye is in focus whilst the wasp's is not - which is why I wouldn't choose this one.

As with all photography it's always a juggling act and often a series of compromises.



You say - "My reason is that I'm on the lookout for a medium to long zoom with excellent close focus capability" -

If you want images with detail you need to use a macro and get close rather than rely on a zoom to do this. Getting close gets better detail - with birds, too. You soon learn the art of 'stalking' insects and these days I find on occasion I could do with a 60mm rather than a 90mm!

Gear used - A77 and Tamron f2.8 90mm Macro lens. I'd recommend this Macro lens to anyone - does good portraits/product shots, too.

Shot at -
ISO 320 : f8 : 1/125 sec

Hope this is of help and happy 'togging'!

Pat

Thanks Pat,

I appreciate the time that you took to reply. I own and use, almost exclusively, the old Minolta 200mm macro lens and think that it's the best lens I have ever owned. It's razor sharp and the bokeh is 'to die for' (what a silly expression). The damselfly I posted earlier in this thread was taken with it.

I'm always on the lookout for unusual ways to use my gear. For example I don't know many folk who use a 300mm f2.8 plus 2x converter as a macro lens - but I do in combination with other bits and pieces. I'll try to link an example below.

The reason that I was interested in a zoom was that someone gave me one 70-300 I think and I found it very useful for some purposes. Unfortunately it was riddled with fungus so gave very poor results.

Here's an example of my "600mm macro". Not the best picture in the world but sufficient for ID and good enough for the naturalists (not photographers) that it was intended for.



MickH

[Wildieswife]

Nice Difs! (Dragons in Flight). Telephotos can be useful for this sort of shot.
Splitting hairs - your DiFs are not a true macro shot. The term tends to be used rather loosely these days but, for the purist - "Macro photography is taking extremely close-up images of subjects at a 1:1 ratio or less".

Telephotos can be handy but will never capture great detail and the FL is more limited. With a true macro lens you can get really close! It's a subject I know a little about as I helped research my husband's thesis on Hyper Macro Photography. Now the detail you can get with that is incredible! See Hyper macro link to his website .....HERE
Normally I tend towards the practical rather than the theory/physics side of things.





Pat

[MickH]

Thanks again Pat,

I know that I was using the term 'macro' very loosely and of course I know the standard definition. If you think about that definition then true macro is rarely achieved even with a macro lens. If you accept the definition rigorously then it's only macro when the lens is at 1:1 magnification. How many of us are always at that setting?

Do you mind me asking what you mean by FL? Maybe I'll kick myself when you answer but I don't immediately understand.

Would you also be kind enough to point me to a 'how to' article on hyper-macro. I went to your husband's website (magnificent pictures BTW - but not my style. I'll come back to that) and clicked the 'how to' page but it didn't actually have anything at all on 'how to'. It's always possible that I'm not seeing some magic button of course.

I suppose that I tend towards being a naturalist rather than a pure photographer and so your husband's pictures, with their plain backgrounds, don't cut my particular mustard. . Nothing wrong with them of course. As I said they are breathtaking in their own way. Horses for courses
as they say.

I used to use a macro lens a lot. I own three of them - the 200mm as I said being my favourite. Nowadays I don't often take the 'thing on a stick' type of photo (although my damsel further back in the thread was just that). I'm prepared to sacrifice some of the definition/quality in order to get something unusual/new. As I said about the DIF picture - more aimed at a naturalist rather than a photographer.

Here's another example. It's a sort of damselfly 'orgy' I'm not sure that it will show on the screen but the top damsel isn't really sharp but the event is so unusual that doesn't really matter to a naturalist. The photo has been published several times in various nature magazines but was criticized heavily in my photoclub monthly competition. I would be very interested to hear your comments (and anyone else of course).

MickH

[Wildieswife]

Thanks again Pat,

I know that I was using the term 'macro' very loosely and of course I know the standard definition. If you think about that definition then true macro is rarely achieved even with a macro lens. If you accept the definition rigorously then it's only macro when the lens is at 1:1 magnification. How many of us are always at that setting?

Do you mind me asking what you mean by FL? Maybe I'll kick myself when you answer but I don't immediately understand.

Would you also be kind enough to point me to a 'how to' article on hyper-macro. I went to your husband's website (magnificent pictures BTW - but not my style. I'll come back to that) and clicked the 'how to' page but it didn't actually have anything at all on 'how to'. It's always possible that I'm not seeing some magic button of course.

I suppose that I tend towards being a naturalist rather than a pure photographer and so your husband's pictures, with their plain backgrounds, don't cut my particular mustard. . Nothing wrong with them of course. As I said they are breathtaking in their own way. Horses for courses
as they say.

I used to use a macro lens a lot. I own three of them - the 200mm as I said being my favourite. Nowadays I don't often take the 'thing on a stick' type of photo (although my damsel further back in the thread was just that). I'm prepared to sacrifice some of the definition/quality in order to get something unusual/new. As I said about the DIF picture - more aimed at a naturalist rather than a photographer.

Here's another example. It's a sort of damselfly 'orgy' I'm not sure that it will show on the screen but the top damsel isn't really sharp but the event is so unusual that doesn't really matter to a naturalist. The photo has been published several times in various nature magazines but was criticized heavily in my photoclub monthly competition. I would be very interested to hear your comments (and anyone else of course).

MickH

Mike - Sorry for sounding like I was 'teaching my grandmother how to suck eggs'. One never knows how much another person knows and there's no way I want to get into semantics or argue the case for the true meaning of 'Macro'. I am merely regurgitating what I've read in books. 'Walking the walk' is more my style than 'talking the talk'.

FL = focal length.

The damselfly image is wonderful but the eye section is indeed OOF (out of focus) If this were my shot I would have taken it to perfection by duplicating the image in PS (photoshop), opening both copy and original and cloning a section from the sharper damsel underneath . Or, better still, even select and move then you could also use 'transform' to make a better fit. You would still have the original to prove this was indeed a genuine orgy and you hadn't faked it You would have to do this very well, of course.
It would not have pleased those purists at your photoclub but you may have sold even more! We don't do 'photoclubs' as they tend to forget that PPing (post processing) is as much a part of the art of digital photography as it was in the darkroom days! Commercially no one cares about this aspect of things as long as it is done well, the image is up to an acceptable standard re clarity and cleanness and you aren't faking/claiming something that was never there! Of course for competitions it's not acceptable unless it's allowed.

As regards the 'How to' link.... Sorry about that! The info was removed as times changed and OH altered his equipment/technique. He'll remove the heading now you've reminded him it's still there.
The different aspects of what he does could fill a book. It may yet. From collecting and setting to the techniques of lighting each stage involves techniques he has developed himself. He uses a 'stack shot' rack which can be programmed to move in mils/thous throughout the insect to capture every detail accurately and counteract the problems of DOF (depth of field) in such a tiny subject. Then of course there is the PPing. He's studied and tested many programmes and Zerene (in Dmap mode) is about the best for his own system - which includes much PPing after that.

Thanks for your interest. I prefer my insects out in the field, although I have done some hyper macro, using hand stacking as at that time OH only had Nikon. Now he has the A77 he's acquired adaptors that I can also use if I want to. I did put one hyper macro image on here that I had taken a step further by PPing a faked reflection in afterwards.

Pat

[MickH]

Mike - Sorry for sounding like I was 'teaching my grandmother how to suck eggs'. One never knows how much another person knows and there's no way I want to get into semantics or argue the case for the true meaning of 'Macro'. I am merely regurgitating what I've read in books. 'Walking the walk' is more my style than 'talking the talk'.

No Need for apologies. You have no reason to know what I know, what level I'm at or anything else. In any case I never mind being told something , even if I know it, because there will always be the gem that I don't know.

FL = focal length.

Told you I'd kick myself! Feel quite dumb now.

The damselfly image is wonderful but the eye section is indeed OOF (out of focus) If this were my shot I would have taken it to perfection by duplicating the image in PS (photoshop), opening both copy and original and cloning a section from the sharper damsel underneath . Or, better still, even select and move then you could also use 'transform' to make a better fit. You would still have the original to prove this was indeed a genuine orgy and you hadn't faked it You would have to do this very well, of course.
It would not have pleased those purists at your photoclub but you may have sold even more! We don't do 'photoclubs' as they tend to forget that PPing (post processing) is as much a part of the art of digital photography as it was in the darkroom days! Commercially no one cares about this aspect of things as long as it is done well, the image is up to an acceptable standard re clarity and cleanness and you aren't faking/claiming something that was never there! Of course for competitions it's not acceptable unless it's allowed.

Strewth Pat - you will get me drummed out of all of my photo links. I'm happy/sad/proud/ashamed to tell you that I'm one of the purists. I subscribe fully to the RPS 'rules' for NH digital. You are limited to 'cleaning up' - no major manipulation. I'm afraid that doing what you suggested didn't even enter my head. In conjunction with the above I should add that I never try to sell my pictures - sometimes though it just happens. So 'doctoring' one to make it more saleable wouldn't occur to me. As I said, although I love photography and although I'm a member of some photo 'societies' my main interest is in the Natural History.

In any event I wouldn't have done it on this image because, if you look closely, the wing of the upper damsel are in a most peculiar position (for a damsel). I didn't have time to examine the trio closely and only managed to snatch a couple of exposures.

I prefer my insects out in the field,

Pat

Me too - every time.

Thanks for the replies. It's interesting 'speaking' to a like minded person.

MickH

[Wildieswife]

Strewth Pat - you will get me drummed out of all of my photo links. I'm happy/sad/proud/ashamed to tell you that I'm one of the purists. I subscribe fully to the RPS 'rules' for NH digital. You are limited to 'cleaning up' - no major manipulation.

I'd never introduce any shot I'd manipulated without saying what I did and/or why. Some are obviously manipulated. I'll put some on a thread today. Cheating is when you don't admit to it and try to enter a comp without being truthful. Dodging/burning /curves/slight sharpening/cloning out marks are all acceptable. If an image is to be printed, PPing for print has to be done. If you sell an image for print the publisher will ensure that the PPing is done for print. The system re Printing is another art, as well as camera knowledge or PPing.
As far as I'm concerned, digital photography wasn't invented in order for us to be stuck with the constraints of film. If we worked on that principal we'd still be shooting Daguerrotypes

Thanks for the replies. It's interesting 'speaking' to a like minded person.

Likewise.



Pat

[aster]

Gorgeous macro photos!

Pat, what your husband does with insects in the field of Hyper-Macros is quite extraordinary. l was wondering how he prepared the specimens to photograph them so nicely from all angles; are they alive or made to appear so?

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz