Two snails, two spiders, one crane fly

[GardenersHelper]

These were captured hand-held in our garden yesterday with a Laowa 100mm 2x macro lens and 2X and 1.4X teleconverters on a Sony A7ii with a Venus Optics KX800 twin flash. As described in this post in my Journey thread, I was testing the KX800 as an alternative to the Yongnuo twin flash that I have been using recently. I have used the KX800 a lot for several years with my bridge and micro four thirds cameras, but have not used it before with the A7ii.

I used a preset in DXO PhotoLab to do the raw conversion and some initial processing, and then used Lightroom to do image-specific adjustments and produce 1300 pixel high JPEGs, on which I used Topaz DeNoise AI for noise reduction and sharpening. There are 1300 pixel high versions of these images and the others from the session in this album at Flickr.

#1 These two snails were rather small.

1708 06 2020_09_29 DSC05395_PLab3 LR 1300h DNAIAuto by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#2

1708 05 2020_09_29 DSC05390_PLab3 LR 1300h DNAIAuto by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#3

1708 02 2020_09_29 DSC05336_PLab3 LR 1300h DNAIAuto by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#4
1708 09 2020_09_29 DSC05420_PLab3 LR 1300h DNAIAuto by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#5

1708 15 2020_09_29 DSC05518_PLab3 LR 1300h DNAIcAutolo by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#6

1708 16 2020_09_29 DSC05490_PLab3 LR 1300h DNAIcAuto by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#7

1708 20 2020_09_29 DSC05480_PLab3 LR 1300h DNAIcAuto by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#8

1708 25 2020_09_29 DSC05659_PLab3 LR 1300h DNAIcLoLo by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

 

[Paul Iddon]

The lighting seems uniform and very acceptable - and a good set too Nick.

Paul.

 

[GardenersHelper]

The lighting seems uniform and very acceptable - and a good set too Nick.

Paul.

Thanks Paul.

Thanks for the feedback about the light. That is useful. I've been comparing so many options that I get to the point where I can't tell up from down any more.

 

[Graham]

Hi Nick, Yes,great lighting but you nearly always get it right.
That crane fly shot of the eyes is crazy good.

 

[GardenersHelper]

Hi Nick, Yes,great lighting but you nearly always get it right.

Thanks Graham. It's ok with easy subjects, but not so good with reflective ones. I bin a lot of those shots. If you do occasionally see a shiny beetle etc shot from me it's highly likely that I've cheated and used some (often low opacity) cloning to damp it down. I wish I could do it with better illumination (which was what the, failed, experiment with cross polarised illumination was all about), but I haven't yet been able to get close to doing that.

That crane fly shot of the eyes is crazy good.

Thanks. I was just now working out for a response elsewhere that I suspect the effective aperture for that one could well have been somewhere around f/180. That would f/36 as set on the camera, at a magnification of - I'm guessing because I don't keep track of the magnifications I use - around 4X, so effective aperture around 5 x 36 = 180.

 

[Cobra]

Another great set as always, but I'm loving the crane fly's Nick

 

[GardenersHelper]

Another great set as always, but I'm loving the crane fly's Nick

Thanks Chris. The crane fly seems to be going down quite well.

 

[Cobra]

The crane fly seems to be going down quite well.

I guess as its rarely or ever been seen in such detail
Gotta say they are really fugly close up though

 

[Norkie]

I've never seen a cranefly that close before, excellent

 

[GardenersHelper]

I've never seen a cranefly that close before, excellent

Thanks. It's nice to be able to go in that close without having to mess about with anything extra like extension tubes or close-up lenses, and use a single shot. I've never really got to grips with focus stacking for insects out in the field. Flowers are fine, but they are a lot bigger. I've seen it done with really small subjects like springtails, but I think it's beyond me to manage that. I suppose with really big ones like crane flies it would be much easier; perhaps I'll try that some time.

 

[footman]

Perfect colour and detail, you seem to have zero hand wobble

 

[GardenersHelper]

Perfect colour and detail,

Thanks.

you seem to have zero hand wobble

I wish that were the case. However, my hands wobble a lot. For example, here is an image which was stacked from 90 JPEGs extracted from a 6K video.


1630 4 stacked image 1604 09 2018_10_30 P1630556 90f C4+outerB26,4 LR 1300h-DNAI (1) by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Here at Flickr you can see the hand-held video from which it was created. I expect you will be surprised at how much hand wobble there is. And that is with a quite large subject. With smaller subjects like insects, spiders etc the amount of hand wobble is the same but the effect is even more marked.

I don't stack insects etc, but the hand wobble makes focusing quite interesting. I have seen my success rate improve with my latest setup which gives me greater DOF. If I've got twice or perhaps four times as much DOF as before I have a much greater chance of catching the subject in the in-focus area.