No not the game at which England excels :whistle:, but a speckled bush cricket. I spotted it in the house this evening and carefully took it outside. In return it posed patiently while I took some photos. These were taken with the 105 macro lens and ring-flash.
On the card used to remove it outside
The last of those shots is a stacked image from three shots all at slightly different focus. I used Combine Z5 to do the stack. The software does all the hard work, but it allows greater depth of field by combining three images. You need a very still subject and either a tripod, or as in this case a firm base on which to steady the camera.
Those shots are in my Insects and Bugs album, along with some new butterfly photos.
The next shot is from a series I took of a black-headed gull today in its summer plumage. For once the light was decent (is this really summer?), and shows the distinctive brown marking on the gull's face from which it gets its name. To be fair, from a distance the face does look black.
More of the gull in the July Birds album.
Camera note: the cricket was taken with the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro and EM-140 DG ring flash. The gull was photographed with the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.
Vulpes vulpes
22 Jul 2008The cricket in the second one is almost alien like! :alien:
Words
22 Jul 2008Vulpes, :spock:
Ukwildlife
22 Jul 2008great stuff 🙂
Cynthia23
22 Jul 2008Outstanding photography Words!
SittingFox
22 Jul 2008The stacked picture is excellent. If I ever get a macro lens, I'll certainly be doing some of that 🙂
Flying Red Fox Blog
22 Jul 2008Interesting creature i like the textures of him 😀
Words
23 Jul 2008Neil, thanks!
Words
23 Jul 2008Mark, yes they're strange little things, but unlike grasshoppers don't scoot away if you go near them.
Words
23 Jul 2008Adele, the macro lens is pretty versatile, and excellent for foxes from a moderate 'garden' distance. The Sigma is a bit slow to autofocus, but wonderfully sharp.
Words
23 Jul 2008Cynthia, thanks. A co-operative subject helps a lot!
Words
23 Jul 2008Brendan, the ring-flash is great but puts the camera out of use for anything else and the weight of it kills the auto focus on the sigma lens. But given the right subject, it is excellent for getting in really close. As for the cricket, we seem to have gone backwards over the past few years.
chthoniid
23 Jul 2008Nice cricket shots 🙂 The ringflash certainly seems to help with the lighting. Alas, I've never had a creepy-crawly sit still long enough to merit a stacking approach ;).
And I should mention that England did beat NZ in the recent cricket test series, even if the feat couldn't be repeated for the 1-day series 🙂 Australia and SA are definitely the teams to beat at the moment.
chthoniid
23 Jul 2008Aah, nothing is ever quite as simple as it first appears in macro-photography.
Are you having problems with Opera at the moment- I'm getting a lot of server errors and a lot of my subscriptions are disappearing?
Words
23 Jul 2008It's been clunky here for the past couple of days. A couple of posts I made earlier took a while to show up.