End of December - Two flowers and a shield bug

[GardenersHelper]

Captured hand-held today in our garden during an exceedingly brief session before being dragooned into gardening tasks. There are 1300 pixel high versions in this album at Flickr.

These two were captured using available light with a 60mm macro lens on a micro four thirds Panasonic G9. They were both stacked from 6K videos using Helicon Focus to produce TIFF files which were finished in Lightroom, with a round trip to Photoshop for the second one.

Viburnum tinus

[NOTE: Image replaced with version with adjusted white balance.]


1594 1 P1122089 39f B8,4 LR 1300h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Mahonia x media 'Charity'

[NOTE: Image replaced with version with adjusted white balance.]


1594 2 P1122096 36f A26,4 innerC4-Edit LR 1300h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

As it was quite cold I went out to look for flowers rather than insects, but was surprised to find this shield bug. It was in a very awkward position and this was the only angle I could get on it. It was captured as raw using a Venus Optics KX800 twin flash and a Raynox 150 on a 1/2.3" sensor Panasonic FZ200 bridge camera. (I have gone back to using a 2012 vintage FZ200 as my FZ330 has developed a fault.) The raw file was processed with presets in DXO PhotoLab and Silkypix, with image specific adjustments in Lightroom.


1594 3 P1030920_PLab3 SP9 LR 1300h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

 

[F1.2]

Wow , the detail on the sheild bug is amazing , I'm enveous of your skills

 

[GardenersHelper]

Wow , the detail on the sheild bug is amazing , I'm enveous of your skills

Thanks. That one was difficult to get at; it had another leaf quite close over it so I had to shoot at about 30-45 degrees upwards, and pretty much lined up on its back. The main thing for me was just to record that I had seen it, which was rather unusual for this time of year. In terms of visual appeal I much prefer to have more freedom about the angle of attack, like with these for example.


1026 15 2015_09_10 P1150708_DxO RAW01a100 SP7a LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


1106 66 2016_06_20 P1910819_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6-2 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


1106 73 2016_06_20 P1910851_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


1152 60 2015_09_03 P1100363_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 1300h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Best of all when they are moving around like the last one was and you can get a series of images from various angles, like images 52 to 65 in this album at Flickr.