Beautiful shot, Timmy. Very nice light.
Great shot Tim, really good lighting & composition.
Thanks Kurt, George, much appreciated.
Strange little critter this, is it related to a lobster or crab/crab spider by any chance ?
Despite its name.
Ok, I'm a bit confused by what you are asking so apologies if I don't answer your question correctly. It's not related to either a lobster or a crab, which are crustaceans and usually categorised by their branched limbs. Crabs and lobsters are decapods (10 legged), but a related terrestrial example is the woodlouse. I would say they are no more related to these creatures than say, we are to fish, but I guess due to the claws there is a similarity there. I suspect however, these have evolved independently but I'd need to go off and do some further research to be sure.
The crab spider is an arachnid, so belongs to the same family (as David points out). This includes spiders, harvestmen, scorpions, psuedoscopions, acari (mites and ticks) and solifuges (camel spiders). Of these the harvestmen, scorpions, psuedoscorpions and solifuges are usually group together, so I assume these must be the closest relatives. Whether or not scorpions and psuedoscorpions are the closest relatives of this group, I couldn't tell you.
Anyway, hopefully this will make sense, but if not, or I've misinterpreted what you were asking please let me know!
Great shot Tim
What sort of size is that?
Thanks alf, I suspect around 3-4mm. I originally was shooting at 7X magnification, which gives me a frame width of around 4mm, and I had to pull back a bit as I was struggling to get it in frame (it was moving, which made it more difficult).
I remember these from my (long distant) student days. Sifting through leaf litter to do counts of species. They are arachnids and are usually 3 to 5 mm long.
Yep, I can confirm that! thanks.
Thanks Paul, but I can't claim credit for finding it unfortunately. I had a fellow (and far better) macro photographer with me who pointed it out Hopefully I'll have more luck now I know what to look for and be able to find some of my own.
Nice find Tim.
As it's specifically
Critique, I'll let my mind wander on this one.
65mm focal length suggests you were using the MPE-65. I'm wondering what magnification you were at. The reason I ask is that if not at minimum magnification I tend to decrease the magnification so as to fill less of the frame with the subject (this is an uncropped image I believe from the pixel count) so as to increase the dof, which in this case might perhaps get the whole of the head and body and possibly the near "claw" in focus. (This is a live issue for me at the moment because as I'm going through my backlog I keep kicking myself for having repeatedly filled too much of the frame with the subject at capture time so that I then throw the images away at selection time because of inadequate dof. I've also realised/been surprised from my attempts with springtails as to just how much latitude there can be for cropping.),
Excellent thanks Nick! Yes, MP-E with 1.4X extender, which I believe gives me practically 7X magnification (I calculated it to be about 6.989 something or other, so figure it best to round up). I believe I should be able to calculate magnification with this set up by just multiplying my magnification setting on the MP-E by 1.4. As explained above I had to pull back to around 4X magnification on the MP-E so was probably just under 6X for this shot.
With regard to cropping (and you are right this is an uncropped image) I supposed I have the mindset as someone who tries to stack images that I should be attempting to fill the frame as much as possible with the subject and keep a wide aperture to retain as much detail as possible. For this one I couldn't attempt a stack (the only time it kept still was when it had hidden itself in a small crevice, out of the light and out of my camera's view) and reviewing the shots I was getting I knew I needed to increase the DoF to stop the claws being a complete blur. I automatically thought "DoF = aperture" and increased it, knowing I would have to sacrifice some level of detail. Even that didn't give me enough, and you are quite right, I should have considered the possibility of using cropping to achieve better DoF.
I guess I've always seen cropping as a compositional tool (to correct things when you don't get it right in camera), and rarely seen it as a useful way of getting better images. I've read about it of course (especially from your experiments) but I guess it's never really clicked until now. Currently I don't know where I can push the limits, but it is something I will try to do in the future, especially where stacking isn't a possibility. Who knows, it may even justify my desire to jump to full frame (and I've been trying to find an excuse for a while). Thanks for that, it is something I will remember and try out in future.
I notice you were shooting ISO 200. Given that base ISO is 100 on the 550D, and given that flash was presumably the dominant light source, then was the use of ISO 200 necessary to get enough light on to the subject? (Reason I ask is that I'm trying flash again with my 70D and I'm running into some similar issues - but I recall your flash, unlike mine, being set up so as to be really near the subject so perhaps this isn't the issue.)
Somewhat similarly, the flash sync on the 550D is 1/200 I think. You used 1/160. As a matter of routine I use max flash sync speed where flash is the dominant light source, although I suppose in practical terms it doesn't make any difference as the flash pulse is providing the effective shutter speed. (The flash sync on the 70D is 1/250, and you can force shutter speed to 1/250 when using flash in Av, which is what I have done, so unless I'm trying to bring up the background that's how I leave it. In fact if I do want to lengthen the exposure I leave the forced 1/250 Av setting alone and go into Manual mode.)
I think Brynn explains this just as well as I could, so I'll refer you to his comments; however see my response below...
Looking at the backgound at the top of the full size version, especially on the left but also elsewhere, am I seeing lots of dust bunnies? (I see David gives a typical size of 3 to 5mm long for this subject, That length would have made your magnification quite high, making your nominal f/10 into an effective aperture in the range perhaps of f/40 (at 3:1, 7.5mm scene width) to f/50 (at 4:1, 5.5mm scene width). That would really show up any dust on the sensor. Also, I wonder if cropping from a larger aperture, less diffraction-impacted version might give better image quality? (With a trade off between sharpness/detail and dof to be handled of course in relation to the amount of cropping/aperture increase.)
I read this and was slightly perplexed. Dust bunnies?? On one of my images?? Surely not!
I always make a point (usually one of the first things I do once I've found an image worth working on) to dutifully go through at 100% or near enough, and apply the spot healing brush to all the dust bunnies I come across. These are usually around the edges of the frame rather than the subject, so I don't worry to much about cleaning the sensor too often. all the same, I'll usually end up with at least 50 spot healing circles by the time I've finished.
I was expecting the dust bunnies you described to be just features of the mottled background as I couldn't see anything obvious on the web displayed image above. I clicked through to flickr and viewed at 100% and shock, horror! There they were! Loads of 'em!!
How embarrassing!! I went back to my original image to see if I managed to clean some (any larger more obvious ones) and somehow missed these, but no; it seems I had just completely skipped this step in my post-processing workflow. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll go back and clean these up at some stage.
It does make me wonder how many other times I might have forgotten this part of the process though
I suppose it'll be alright as long as I double check any I ever want to print etc.
@GardenersHelper
ISO 200? I use this to both conserve battery on flash and also allow a little more ambient into the shot to boost the shadows that the flash doesn't cover (this is same with shutter speed)
Plus I don't see any difference in IQ in both settings so ISO 200 is best of both worlds.
Think your Canadian friend ? "Debbie" suggests using ISO 400 to get the best out of a flash. But ISO 400 on 500d 550d Isn't great when you do some post processing.
1/160s? I use this as I'm now comfortable that I can freeze subjects down to 1/100s it also increases the effectiveness of the flash light but also allows in more ambient. 1/160s is my setting of choice though.
With this and ISO 200 I'm recovering 1 1/3rd stops of light.
I am interested what Tim might say but this is why I do it.
Yep, spot on. These are the main reasons I use these types of settings (ISO200 gives sufficient IQ I am still happy with yet will allow more ambient through and reduce power requirements on the flash, similarly for 1/160) however in hindsight I don't think they were particularly appropriate for this image. The idea behind these types of values is to reduce light fall-off where there is nothing in the background to catch the light, or it might be quite far back from the subject. In this case however, I suspect the background (a concrete slab) was sufficiently close enough to the subject and at a suitable angle to catch the flash light. I was shooting single shots also, so flash recycle time is less of an issue.
To be honest though, when you have a moving target like this your rarely get chance to refine you settings between shots. I just dial in something I am comfortable with and gives a reasonable exposure and just keep going for it. Had I been able to get a lower angle at some point then I would already have the required settings to reduce light fall-off as much as possible, without having to hold something up behind and these settings would likely have been more justified.
Psuedoscorpion by Tim.Garlick, on Flickr
