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A Rare Opportunity
e6filmuser
Registered Users Posts: 3,378 Major grins
I occasionally find adult carabid (ground) beetles under stones, logs or bark. Most are nocturnal and they flee when I expose them to daylight. This one was an exception. It not only stayed still for one session, which I then had to repeat because of an incorrect camera setting, but it stayed still a second time, having moved to a new position when the chunk of bark was in the position in which I originally found it.
Lighting a very shiny beetle is always problematic, whether by daylight or flash. A shiny black beetle seems even more difficult. I tried changing the angles for which my twin flashes were aimed, with limited improvement.
This beetle was around 20mm long. It is one of the genus known as Pterostichus or Feronia.
EM-1, 21mm extension, reversed Schneider HM 40mm at f16, twin TTL RC flash, one free-standing, hand-held.
The images have been cropped slightly. The blur in the first one is the left antenna.
Harold
Lighting a very shiny beetle is always problematic, whether by daylight or flash. A shiny black beetle seems even more difficult. I tried changing the angles for which my twin flashes were aimed, with limited improvement.
This beetle was around 20mm long. It is one of the genus known as Pterostichus or Feronia.
EM-1, 21mm extension, reversed Schneider HM 40mm at f16, twin TTL RC flash, one free-standing, hand-held.
The images have been cropped slightly. The blur in the first one is the left antenna.
Harold
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Thanks.
Believe it or not, another species in the same genus, and with much the same design of mandibles, is vegetarian, or at least largely so.
Harold
Brian V.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/
http://www.lordv.smugmug.com/
Thanks, Brian.
There are times when you wish you had brought your regular macro lens!
Anyway, an interesting experience.
Harold