OT: Hopper fun!

[Surfzone]

That's a pretty landscape. Here all we have is dense woods, or seemingly endless expanses of salt marsh.
Here's one of the woods near my house.

["Umm, fish?"]

Ah. Man, I don't get up to the RM national park enough. There's always so much traffic on the weekend and it's just a liiiiittttle far away when it's stop-and-go. It's too bad. I would love to explore it more. Nice photo!

[Kmiec123]

That Comment sounds like poison to my ears.....If only I was as close as you. I would say full-time Park Ranger, part-time fish breeder would work for me.
For those that don't know RM....Rocky Mountain National Park...This shot was of Cub Lake...about a three mile hike in from the Cub Lake Trail Head.

And this Park is about a two hour drive for Andy!

[Kmiec123]

Just got a cool HDR Software in the mail today...Photomatix Pro 3....We will see how much fun I can have with this.

["Umm, fish?"]

Well, more like 2.5-3.0 on the weekend. My kiddo gets carsick, so we have to dramamine her both ways and last time she threw up all over the park. It's just a little too far. But you do have to remember that we can hike a 14,000 foot mountain in a city park and that I can _walk_ 20 minutes to a few smaller mountains to hike.

I _love_ the glacier hike at the top of RMNP, though, and all the beaver meadows in the lower parts in the spring and fall. And the light there is just amazing.

HDR software can be fun. A trick: If you shoot in RAW, you can do HDR with only one image. In RAW, you pick the photo's exposure when processing. So, out of one photo, you save out several at different levels of exposure, then run it through the HDR.

[Kmiec123]

Was playing with your trick suggestion already. Cool stuff.

[kiwicraig7]

Not too sure if I'm a big fan of the fly pic. Hey it's a good shot I'm just not a fly guy. OK that didn't come out right did it? I do really like the hopper pics though.
Cool. I have tried taking some of those shots myself in the past but, lets just say I'm photographically challenged.

["Umm, fish?"]

It's all just practice. I had some hobby down time while doing a remodel, so I spent a lot of time practicing with the camera.

[Kmiec123]

Use a tripod and join a local camera club.

[sehnazjoshep]

not as cool as Andy but this is my 1st attempt
[ http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/amashun/fly.jpg ]

This is very scary photo beacause I am scaring from insects especially when I look them.

These were taken Here: Nice spot for the to spawn, don't ya think?
[ http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff180/kmiec123/Mountinereflection3.jpg ]

This is very good picture of nature. I have saved it as my desktop backgorund and it looks so amazing.

[Kmiec123]

Thanks.

[aomont]

Ok, we have bug lovers here !
Those snail in photo look like ghosts but are beautiful. Which species is this Andy ?

["Umm, fish?"]

Funny you should ask, Anderson. I have more information on them here: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/11/aafeature

[aomont]

Wow ! I know that author !!!!!

Here are the bugs that comes around the house. Not good photo skills colors and a messy backgrounds so I cropped to show the bug actors

Green hopper.JPG

Green hopper - close.JPG

Yellow spider.JPG

Yellow spider in action.JPG

[WDT]

Tiny hopper


Have you guys seen Microcosmos?

[aomont]

Tiny hopper

An ant-mimicking one !!! Or spider mimicking ?

[WDT]

Tiny hopper

An ant-mimicking one !!! Or spider mimicking ?

I think it might be a Katydid nymph.

[aomont]

Indeed ! I had never seen one.

["Umm, fish?"]

Nice! The stripes on that last one are way cool. I have some cool spider photos, too, that I can put up. I'm in the middle of cooking dinner at the moment, though.

[WDT]

Andy,

Are you using a MP-E 65mm f/2.8?

-Will

["Umm, fish?"]

I do use that lens as well as the 100mm macro. I love the 65mm despite all its weirdnesses but the distance to the subject is very, very small and that makes its use for aquarium photography pretty limited. Pretty tough to do insect photography, too, but the challenge is all part of the fun, right?

Both lenses, IMO, really can only shine when you upgrade the flash, too. The onboard flash is pretty useless for macro. It has enough power (any light at all focused on such a small subject is pretty overpowering), but its positioning is horrible. You really need to get the light out away from the lens so you don't get bad shadows.

You also need to play a lot with manuals settings with the 65mm lens. The onboard light meter will _never_ tell you that you're getting enough light for exposure. You have to just ignore that and try a lot of different exposures. The light meter always tells me I'm underexposed, but if you take the photo anyway, the camera's software will try to compensate for the lack of ambient light with the flash. (My theory is that the camera's software is designed to save power whenever possible, so it _always_ tries to only use the flash as fill light. But if you force the software past that point, it _will_ do what it can to salvage your photo, even at the expense of running out the batteries quickly. I use a supplemental battery pack (rechargeable) for my flash unit and then push it hard.) So it's a lot of trial-and-error.