Praying Mantis

[Stagecoach]

The perfect model, let me pick him/her up place on a plant and zap away until my batteries gave up

The expression on these this guys face was great, moved his head around watching what I was doing and at the end of the session sat on my hand for a while then flew out of the door and is hanging out on the balcony. I bet he's not there for some daylight shots tomorrow.





Grahame

[AB26]

Hi Grahame,

Beautiful shots.

How far away from your subject is your lens when shooting these makro’s?
Guess it is almost impossible without using the SB-R200.

[Brownbear]

Very nice indeed. Wonderful DOF, detail and focus.. Adore the 2nd image for the amazing eye contact... Looks like you became friends with this critter.

[Wavelength]

Second one is almost impossible

[Stagecoach]

Hi Grahame,

Beautiful shots.

How far away from your subject is your lens when shooting these makro’s?
Guess it is almost impossible without using the SB-R200.

Hi Andre,

They are beautiful little critters.

The front of my lens would have been around 100mm away from its head and I had the two SBR-200s attached pointing inwards, in other words firing light from both sides. I'm presently designing a 'snoot' using auto-cad that can be folded from card and the idea being that I can direct light from the SB-600 fixed on the camera and provide a wide area diffused light pointing down at 45 degrees to exactly where the centre of the subject would be if using 1:1 magnification with my lens.

The reasoning being that I want the lighting more natural from flash but also want it directed so that I can achieve the black backgrounds easily indoors.

Grahame

[Stagecoach]

Hi Christina,

Thank you. I use a low powered desk light on the subject to assist when focussing and also took a bit of time moving this one around to get him in-line with the sensor the best I could.

Looked for him this morning but he had gone

Grahame

[Stagecoach]

Thanks Nandakumar,

If I had not of had problems with my batteries I would have tried to get some closer shots.

Grahame

[Bobobird]

Beautiful shots. #2 is outstanding.

[Stagecoach]

Thanks Bobo,

As they say in the glamour world it's the model that counts

Grahame

[John 2]

The second shot because of the apparent eye contact for me as well Graham. Couple of nice shots.

[FootLoose]

Fantastic shots, Grahame, I love the detail in these. S/he seems to be smiling at you in the 2nd one.

[stronics]

Great shots, really neat.
David

[Brownbear]

Hi Grahame,

Thank you for sharing.. No preying mantis's in Vancouver but one day I will have another opportunity to photograph insects like these so I truly appreciate the details of the how-tos...

I think he likes you and will come back for another visit.

Hi Christina,

Thank you. I use a low powered desk light on the subject to assist when focussing and also took a bit of time moving this one around to get him in-line with the sensor the best I could.

Looked for him this morning but he had gone

Grahame

[Stagecoach]

John, Greg, David and Christina,

Thanks for the comments. I need to try and find out where these guys hang out so that I can find them easily. There's a never ending supply of stick insects but they just don't have the same character.

Grahame

[Brownbear]

A little bit of info on praying mantis in Wikipedia that actually looks fairly informative... ie; green leaves, artificial lights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis

John, Greg, David and Christina,

Thanks for the comments. I need to try and find out where these guys hang out so that I can find them easily. There's a never ending supply of stick insects but they just don't have the same character.

Grahame