Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel
Mint Beetle
A beautiful shiny green mint beetle, one of the British jewels. Chrysolina menthastri. Photo didn't quite go as planned as the light from the smallHD field monitor posterised a bit round the back left of the specimen which is a shame! I Still, there's a bit of impact there so I posted it. I purposely kept the depth of field shallow to make sure that the front whiskers were set against an oof background (to give it a 3d feel) but the flipside of this is that the left antennae is out of focus towards the left. One of those compromises you have to make. One note of interest, I have to say that this photo really shows the value of a stereo microscope. I've always had a lot of problems preparing for photographs but it's easy under a scope - ditto with cleaning. I used a small paintbrush and I had virtually no detritus removal to do in post. Phew =)
Technical: BG output onto SmallHD via HDMI matrix used as background; rear curtain sync 2s exposures; 64 photos with no sub stacks, Zerene Stacker Dmap and Pmax combined, finished off with CS4, NoiseNinja & Topaz Detail. Step size of 55µm, polystyrene chip cone diffuser. Resized to reduce noise. Componon 28 f/4 reversed on slightly extended bellows so about 2:1 ish; 3 flashes @1/32 perpendicular @2 &10 o'clock, @1/32 perpendicular @6 o'clock.
On another note I was disappointed to discover that there seems to be a bug with a Metz-58II/Pentax K-5 combination regarding rear curtain sync. It doesn't work as intended or described by Metz - setting a 2s exposure on manual and firing the Metz 58 on rear sync on 1/32 gets you a totally dark screen. On the K-7 it works perfectly but Metz have not programmed the 58 correctly for the K5, even on latest Metz firmware V3. This is so frustrating as a consumer because there's just nothing you can do about it. Sigh, another technology letdown.
Mint Beetle
A beautiful shiny green mint beetle, one of the British jewels. Chrysolina menthastri. Photo didn't quite go as planned as the light from the smallHD field monitor posterised a bit round the back left of the specimen which is a shame! I Still, there's a bit of impact there so I posted it. I purposely kept the depth of field shallow to make sure that the front whiskers were set against an oof background (to give it a 3d feel) but the flipside of this is that the left antennae is out of focus towards the left. One of those compromises you have to make. One note of interest, I have to say that this photo really shows the value of a stereo microscope. I've always had a lot of problems preparing for photographs but it's easy under a scope - ditto with cleaning. I used a small paintbrush and I had virtually no detritus removal to do in post. Phew =)
Technical: BG output onto SmallHD via HDMI matrix used as background; rear curtain sync 2s exposures; 64 photos with no sub stacks, Zerene Stacker Dmap and Pmax combined, finished off with CS4, NoiseNinja & Topaz Detail. Step size of 55µm, polystyrene chip cone diffuser. Resized to reduce noise. Componon 28 f/4 reversed on slightly extended bellows so about 2:1 ish; 3 flashes @1/32 perpendicular @2 &10 o'clock, @1/32 perpendicular @6 o'clock.
On another note I was disappointed to discover that there seems to be a bug with a Metz-58II/Pentax K-5 combination regarding rear curtain sync. It doesn't work as intended or described by Metz - setting a 2s exposure on manual and firing the Metz 58 on rear sync on 1/32 gets you a totally dark screen. On the K-7 it works perfectly but Metz have not programmed the 58 correctly for the K5, even on latest Metz firmware V3. This is so frustrating as a consumer because there's just nothing you can do about it. Sigh, another technology letdown.