Weekly Macro/Close-up thread for 9 May 2010

Nice shot Dinuraj. Raw jackfruit is also very tasty if cooked properly.

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Gautam

Very nice shot, but this one I don't want to eat.

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Gautam

Good shots. In the first image s/he looks like as if in the middle of a jump.

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Gautam

Great shots, specially the first one.

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Gautam

Lovely shots. The second is my fav, though appears to be a tad overexposed on my screen.

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Gautam

Great series Fabian. The first one is my fav. Appears that s/he was smiling at you

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Gautam

One more great example that macro lenses work very fine for portraits!
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Marek
http://galerie.kolas.cz/

yes i agree!
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/41942460@N04/sets/

I think it depends on the species of mite. I believe that those that tend to get on mosquitoes have a phoretic relationship; which means that they are not strictly parasites but are carried by the host and host is largelu unaffected. However I have seen some flies that exhibit slowed reaction times and so presumably the mites would shorten the host's life.

Kind regards
Stephen

Fabian628 said:

i have often seen insects with these orange mites.What do they do, do they eventually kill the insect?
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/41942460@N04/sets/

Click to expand...

....not a patch on your hoverflies mind!

.....I have not calibrated my monitor, so it may well be possible that my post processing is off as a result.......I really should do something about that - & the printer....& the scanner.

Having said that, it has been commented that I may have used too much flash - & I can see what they mean - it has reflected / bounced off the shiny leave. I have to watch for that in the future, I totally missed it on this shot - probably focusing my attention to much on the fly itself.

thanks for responding to my post.

I love this kind of spiders, because you can get beautiful compositions with colors of the flower and from the bug, but are so difficult to see here! (maybe are my eyes?).
I prefer #3

Gautam, your images look wonderfully detailed, I was wondering of you could give us a quick summary of equipment & technique & post process.

BTW, thanks for creating the original thread for all to post to like this.

Slick! Very 'professional' looking.

Great comment ;-)

I love these shots - my young boys loved them too! Really looks like something from another planet!

Thanks for the comments. Here is what I do.

My standard equipment is 40D, 100mm macro lens and Sigma 140 macroflash. Sometimes I use Sigma 180mm macro if I need to stay a bit further away from the subject. I put the camera in M mode with SS at 250 and Aperture 16, occasionally 22, ISO 200. Flash in e-ttl mode usually with power 1:1 but sometimes 1:2 depending on the subject. Lens in MF mode. I try to get as close to the subject as possible. I take exclusively in RAW and hand held.

I use Ufraw (a free software) for raw conversion. Ufraw allows for cropping, brightness adjustment, colour correction, contrast adjustment (either altering linearity/gamma or using curve - or both) and rotation if necessary. I convert the images to jpeg at 85% compression. I use GIMP (another free software) for image editing. Occasionally I use the large jpeg images for minor rotation or other correction but mostly I resize the images first using Irfanview (another free software) before final editing. I sharpen the resized images in Gimp using unsharp mask set at radius 0.2, amount 50%, threshold 10. I need to run this setting usually only once but occasionally twice to get enough sharpness. For some images I use selective sharpening by selecting an area. For a few images I enhance the local contrast by running usm at 30, 20, 10. Other minor corrections, such as removing dist spots, are done at this stage.

That's all. Now I am ready to upload the image.

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Gautam

5DmkII, MP-E, diffused MT24EX, hand-held and shot today. I'm a bit rusty with the MP-E, but nice to get the chance to shoot with it again









a tiny mossie with elaborate hairdo, also featuring a bonus springtail (didn't see it until raw-conversion). Shot at 4x.



Cheers,
Eyvind
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http://eyvindness.zenfolio.com/

Great series Eyvind. #2 & 5 are my fav.

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Gautam

good pictures. I like the ant
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/41942460@N04/sets/

Peter,

Absolutely amazing. I like the wasp the most. How did you get so close without getting popped (i.e. stung)? They tend to be very aggressive.

Wade