JohnAus
Forum Enthusiast
While out gardening, I lopped off a branch with a Mantis egg case attached, so I put it in a container to see if any Mantis would hatch out.
A few days later, a heap of tiny parasitic wasps emerged from the egg case - they are about 3mm long fully grown.
Most of the Mantis eggs must have been eaten. With the Mantis photo opportunity gone, might as well have a go at getting a shot of one of these tiny wasps. Here are the photos ... (technical notes follow after the photos).
The photos were all taken with M 50mm 1.7 lens and extension tubes. Shots #2-#4 were taken with 3 extension tubes (68mm total) and lens reversed. I focussed with lens stopped down to f11. A small LED light was used to assist with focus - the viewfinder was too dark otherwise. (Reversing the lens decouples the lens aperture mechanism, so cannot use open aperture focusing unless you stop down manually - this is not very practical with a subject that is moving and jumping around). Shot 2 is uncropped, #3 and #4 are cropped a bit
Lighting was with AF200T flash. I'm still experimenting with lighting setups. This flash diffuser is based on ozdean's toothpaste box model shown here recently. This cracker biscuit box is coveniently the same width as the AF200T, with a sheet of tissue paper is on the end for more diffusion. Here is a shot of the setup (the lens isn't reversed in this shot). All very basic (apart from the K100D)...
Thanks for looking. Comments welcome.
--
John
A few days later, a heap of tiny parasitic wasps emerged from the egg case - they are about 3mm long fully grown.
Most of the Mantis eggs must have been eaten. With the Mantis photo opportunity gone, might as well have a go at getting a shot of one of these tiny wasps. Here are the photos ... (technical notes follow after the photos).
- 1 - Parasitic Wasps and the Mantis egg case
- 2 - Took the container lid off - just had to hope I could get a few shots before they all flew away.
- 3 - Fortunately a few of them landed on the white paper used as background for first shot.
- 4 - Two males (presumably, from the lack of "tail")
The photos were all taken with M 50mm 1.7 lens and extension tubes. Shots #2-#4 were taken with 3 extension tubes (68mm total) and lens reversed. I focussed with lens stopped down to f11. A small LED light was used to assist with focus - the viewfinder was too dark otherwise. (Reversing the lens decouples the lens aperture mechanism, so cannot use open aperture focusing unless you stop down manually - this is not very practical with a subject that is moving and jumping around). Shot 2 is uncropped, #3 and #4 are cropped a bit
Lighting was with AF200T flash. I'm still experimenting with lighting setups. This flash diffuser is based on ozdean's toothpaste box model shown here recently. This cracker biscuit box is coveniently the same width as the AF200T, with a sheet of tissue paper is on the end for more diffusion. Here is a shot of the setup (the lens isn't reversed in this shot). All very basic (apart from the K100D)...
Thanks for looking. Comments welcome.
--
John
