| | S | M | T | W | T | F | S | | 29 | 30 |
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
| |
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
| |
13
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
| |
20
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
| |
27
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
31
| 1 | 2 |  » Stats |
Members: 50,148
Threads: 82,324
Posts: 853,119
Top Poster: glsammy (15,069)
| | Welcome to our newest member, pywacket4u | |  | | 
25-10-2009, 04:22 PM
|  | Officer of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: May 2009 Location: Sunny Lancashire
Posts: 609
| | | Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
As promised - one of OH's insect studies.
This one is a 46 image stack  - executed in PS CS4.
Equipment-
Nikon D300/Nikkor D60mm f2.8 Micro lens / Reversed mounted on PB6 bellows/ Nikon Twin macro light system/taken at f5.6
It never ceases to amaze me just how beautifully perfect insect life is.
Acher    
__________________
If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want. |
25-10-2009, 04:57 PM
|  | Commander of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: South Northants
Posts: 3,289
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
Very nice stack Acher!
Excellent coverage with 46 frames and no stacking artifacts that I could see. Good shadows and no distracting reflections so your oh did a VERY good job with subject lighting.
What stacking software did he use?
Bruce  |
25-10-2009, 04:58 PM
|  | Knight Grand Cross of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: London
Posts: 11,830
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
Afternoon Acher,
It certainly is! Impressive images such as these show it up perfectly - all those hairs/spurs/dimples and compound eyes. 46 images? Wow! that must require patience and passion. Very well done! So how many insects does OH have?
Thanks for sharing
Take care, Jason  |
25-10-2009, 05:07 PM
| | Officer of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: May 2009 Location: Sunny Lancashire
Posts: 609
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
Bruce - Photoshop CS4 was used.He's found it's the best for stacking and all the other stuff that needs doing.
We've just got extra RAM too - unsurprisingly  He'll soon have a new Mac and I can have his souped up one. My existing PC is a bit poor on memory so not too good for post processing in general.
Jason - As he's not been doing it long he only has about 80 so far. As each one takes around 7hours for capture/post processing and cleaning up they should last a while!
Cheers!
Acher
__________________
If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want. |
26-10-2009, 08:35 AM
| | Officer of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: May 2009 Location: Sunny Lancashire
Posts: 609
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
Thankyou for not pointing the non-deliberate mistake
Don't know what was going on there. Perhaps I thought the Sexton Beetle needed to find his way? 
Acher
__________________
If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want. |
27-10-2009, 12:34 PM
| | Officer of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: May 2009 Location: Sunny Lancashire
Posts: 609
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruce Williams  Very nice stack Acher!
Good shadows and no distracting reflections so your oh did a VERY good job with subject lighting.
Bruce | Bruce - Forgot to say that the subject had been 'isolated' from the original using PS 'extract' as it is part of an ongoing project. A light tent was used and besides the twin lighting there were exernal lamps diffused by the tent.
Acher
__________________
If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want. |
27-10-2009, 12:50 PM
|  | Commander of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Leicestershire
Posts: 4,585
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
good technique, but I'd prefer to see a live one
Any reason why he used f5.6? It would have obviously needed far fewer frames at f16 or similar and there doesn't seem to be any benefit to throwing the background out of focus. Or is this a very small beetle and hence magnification was so great that he was worried about diffraction softening? It looks fairly large though. Just curious.
With my MPE-65 I do tend to open up to around f5.6 or 6.3 at 5x magnification to prevent softening but it doesn't look as though this level of magnification was being used here (but I may be wrong).
Matt
Last edited by matt_xyz; 27-10-2009 at 12:54 PM.
|
27-10-2009, 03:43 PM
|  | Knight Grand Cross of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: North Yorkshire
Posts: 10,729
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
Nicrophorus interruptus if your interested in the species nice photos. |
28-10-2009, 11:17 AM
| | Officer of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: May 2009 Location: Sunny Lancashire
Posts: 609
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
Matt I agree – at F16 degradation of quality would have been negligible. The image quality may be only a tad better at 5.6. This image was, he says, an exercise in what he could do using stacking. he did a lot of PP to overcome resulting artifacts and generally clean up the image etc
And yes - subject isolation by shallow DOF didn’t enter into it as it has been digitally extracted as part of an ongoing process to produce a final composite image.
It will eventually be a conceptual statement on insect niches.
As regards living creatures – I personally agree as I prefer to capture in the wild but as OH’s study is more serious I suppose needs must – especially when the end result will eventually be beneficial as far as the environment/insect life is concerned.
BTW – I like the images on your site. Did you use the old honey/syrup on a leaf technique for those wasps?? LOL I have some similar shots using that system Dogghound – I like that Latin name. I keep thinking the nicro bit reminds me of necro and the interruptus part reminds me of another Latin phrase .
Cheers!
Acher
__________________
If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want. |
28-10-2009, 12:04 PM
| | Commander of the Wild Empire | | Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 2,247
| | | Re: Close up and personal with a Sextant Beetle
Quote:
Originally Posted by acherontia Matt Dogghound – I like that Latin name. I keep thinking the nicro bit reminds me of necro and the interruptus part reminds me of another Latin phrase .
Cheers!
Acher | Yep, nicro and necro are interchangeable here - it may have been due to a typo in the original description (I don't have the right reference books to hand to check) - some older books do use the Necrophorus spelling.
Interruptus refers to the gaps in the yellow/orange bands on the elytra!
henrya
__________________
Sometimes ice cream just has to take priority over everything. | | | |
| Thread Tools | | | | Display Modes |  Linear Mode |
Posting Rules
| You may not post new threads You may not post replies You may not post attachments You may not edit your posts
HTML code is Off
| | |
| | | 20 members and 333 guests | | Adam Cheeseman, afcsupporter, agrumpycow, Andy Healey, cuckooflower, diapasonbill, Dorts, Douglas, frits_b, Gill Catton, GuyF, heron09, Jackaroo, Joel.W, Kenneth Baldwin, Matt Smith, scott665, silverfox4242, Sofija, speyghillie | » New Wildlife Posts | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | » New Environment Posts | | | | | | | | | » New Activity Posts | | | | | | | | | » New Community Posts | | |  Spammers! Yesterday 08:00 AM 5 Replies, 106 Views | | | | | |
