Springtail and Hopper

[GardenersHelper]

Following on from the discussion about kit for small subjects in Alf's recent thread I added a Raynox 250 on to the Raynox 150 that I usually use on my FZ330 small sensor bridge camera with a KX800 twin flash and went out into the garden to see if I could find any small subjects to practice on. I found several (none as small as the 1mm subject so well captured in Alf's post). but couldn't get an even half decent photo of some of them (they were on foliage that was blowing around a lot). Here are some photos of the other two, a springtail in this post and, I think (my identification skills are limited and faulty), a hopper of some sort in the next post. Both of them were on a nice, solid, stationary surface. Bliss - well, except that the hopper was moving around a lot, at a fair pace some of the time.

Also following on from Alf's post, here are some more details about setups. This one covered scene widths from 28mm down to a little over 5mm, with a working distance of around 65mm, which as these things go is quite good I think. However, the smallest scene width I used for these was around 11mm, so in fact could have used less powerful close-up lenses with a larger working distance. For example just using a single Raynox 250 would have got me down to 10mm scene width, with a working distance of around 120mm. Or I could have added a second Raynox 150 on to the one that I usually use and this would have got me down to a scene width of 7mm with a working distance of around 90mm. I think that is the setup I will try next time I go out looking for smaller subjects than I normally photograph.

I used autofocus. The hopper was moving around for some of the shots and during this short session. while I was trying to track moving subjects, I had several occurrences of the "delayed autofocus" that I mentioned in Alf's thread.

The raw files were batch processed in DXO PhotoLab, Silkypix and Lightroom, with image-specific adjustment in Lightroom and export from Lightroom as 1300 pixel high JPEGs, and then additional sharpening done on the JPEGs with Topaz Sharpen AI which produced very subtle effects which will probably be totally lost on the resized version displayed in these posts. The 1300 pixel high versions are in this album at Flickr. I think the resizing by Flickr for display here at 1024 on the long side may be making these look oversharpened.

1.1

1447 01 2019_03_02 P1580748_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

1.2

1447 02 2019_03_02 P1580749_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

1.3 This is the same capture as the previous one, but a deeper crop.

1447 03 2019_03_02 P1580749_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-2-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

1.4

1447 04 2019_03_02 P1580733_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

1.5

1447 05 2019_03_02 P1580725_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

1.6

1447 06 2019_03_02 P1580720_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-2-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Continued in next post

 

[GardenersHelper]

2.1

1447 07 2019_03_02 P1580848_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

2.2

1447 08 2019_03_02 P1580847_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

2.3

1447 10 2019_03_02 P1580842_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

2.4

1447 11 2019_03_02 P1580845_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

2.5

1447 13 2019_03_02 P1580878_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

2.6 This is the same capture as the previous one, but a deeper crop.

1447 14 2019_03_02 P1580878_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-2-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

2.7

1447 15 2019_03_02 P1580879_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

2.8 This is the same capture as the previous one, but a deeper crop.

1447 16 2019_03_02 P1580879_PLab SP7 LR 1300h-2-sharpen by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

 

[petersmart]

Once again - incredibly well done!

 

[GardenersHelper]

Once again - incredibly well done!

Thanks Peter.

 

[alfbranch]

Nice work Nick not a hopper I have seen

 

[GardenersHelper]

Nice work Nick not a hopper I have seen

Thanks Alf. The hopper was a similar to the springtail in size, both around 3.5mm long head and body by my measurements and calculations., so not tiny.