Yes, some more of my macros

[dpastern]

Various macros, of various things.

#1 - crop of a crab spider

#2 - Male tachnidae fly

#3 - female Jumping spider

#4 - female jumping spider in mid motion (not easy to do)

#5 - male Lynx spider

#6 - pastel rose

#7 - emerging Cicada

Dave

[vindictive666]

nice i like number four

regards john

[ving]

great looking series dave. all nice and sharp where they should be.

[Dennis]

Nice work Dave. I particularly like the eyes on the fly, the spider shots and the emerging cicada. Quite difficult portraits to pull off, so well done!

Cheers

Dennis

[dpastern]

Thanks guys :) I haven't been shooting much macro of late, mainly cos there's not a lot in my parents gardens :( I really do miss the gardens that I had in Sydney, they were awesome.

Dave

[kinetic]

Dave,

great skill, lovely detail! Nice work.:thumbsup:

Steve

[Kevnool]

There great pics David.
#7 is quite cool,aint seen that before.
Cheers Kev.

P.S take them L plates off go to the Ps

[dpastern]

Thanks Steve and Kev. Kev - I've only had the pleasure of seeing this once, and by pure luck. I ended up going back and forth over a 2 hour period to get a variety of shots of the emerging Cicada. I've shot a lot of macro over the past 4-5 years (probably 35k+ shots) so I'm very experienced now. I still suck at lighting though lol.

Dave

[kinetic]

LOL, makes me recall an episode of Frontline where the goofy stoner
sound/ lighting guy and camera man were skylarking and not taking
a story very seriously in a rare butterfly enclosure.
While recording Mike doing the serious story, all the butterflies flew
towards the bright lights and got cooked! :)

[dpastern]

hahaha poor things!

Dave

[multiweb]

Amazing shots. My favorite would be #3. The little spider on the leaf. You just can make up a bit of web (jet?) in front of it.

[Jeffkop]

Another really colourful and interesting group Dave, you are going to have quite a collection if you havent already.

[dpastern]

Nah, that's just the leaf structure. A spiders web trails from their spinnerets, which are at the rear of the spider. Jumping spiders (which is what this is) do actually use their silk as a safety line.

Dave

[dpastern]

I've got a lot of average images, some very good images, and a few cracking shots. I'm pretty hard on myself when it comes to grading images ;-)

Dave

[multiweb]

ahh?... ok with all those eyes it's hard to make head from tail? ;)

[dpastern]

here ya go - body parts piccie especially for you Marc!

Dave

[bloodhound31]

Four and five for me. Beautiful!

Baz.

[Octane]

Dave,

That's a great series of images.

Completely different world to landscapes and astrophotography. :lol:

Regards,
Humayun

[matt]

I like 'em:thumbsup:

[dpastern]

Thanks guys :) Just a small selection of some of my favourite images. Each image has a story.

#1 - my first crab spider. After seeing others post images of them, I was delighted one afternoon to find one in our yard. And a large one at that.

#2 - I just nailed this shot, it just clicked. Very patient fly as well, it just happily stayed there. I didn't need to hang around, I nailed the shot on my first effort, but I observed it for around 5 or so minutes. Sometimes, it's nice to just watch

#3 - I spotted this Jumper in one of our neighbours front gardens. Everyone in the area knew I was into photographing "bugs" and I was only too welcome to take shots. I usually had our dog, Monty with me most times. A patient dog, he'd wait for me whilst I took shots.

#4 - This was a special one. I watched this jumper for nearly half an hour. It was very inquisitive and completely unafraid of me and quite large. Catching jumpers in mid stride isn't easy!

#5 - One of my better Lynx spider shots, a large male too. Quite nervy, took a while for him to come out after initially hiding. Taken in the warm afternoon. Most spiders like to sun themselves, especially Lynx spiders.

#6 - one of the roses in the garden where I lived. Not perfect on focus, but I loved the lighting and pastel effect.

#7 - how often does one get to see this?

There are a few things I'm still trying to achieve:

1) damselflies mating

2) 1:1 facial of a dragonfly

3) 1:1 shot of a damselfly

I've had some success with dragonflies, but very little with damselflies, much to my chagrin.

Dave

[ving]

i often wonder about what the best lighting method is... I think someone on another forum once said they use duel flashes, one in front of the subject and another behind... I have tried to get my head around that but cant... lol

[dpastern]

I don't really like using flash (I actually hate it) but it's a necessary evil with macro I'm afraid. I'm really keen on the new Mark IV, if ISO 6400 is clean enough, I'd shoot that, get rid of flash and still have decent DOF. You could try a couple of things, I'd recommend the LordV coca cola diffuser - it does work, it's a very nice, cheap diffuser.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=223485

some shooters swear by one of the twin flash units that Canon makes (can't remember the model) and they use half ping pong balls to diffuse the light. I'm not sure how they do it. I mostly shoot macro with the flash mounted atop of my hotshoe, with a sto-fen diffuser. Not great, but does OK. I do have a flash bracket and offshoe adaptor, but I found that it was causing me back pain (took 2 years to realise this lol).

Dave