A successful ambush

Images of undisturbed subjects in their natural environment. All subject types.

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Thagomizer
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Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2019 2:24 pm
Location: London Ontario

A successful ambush

Post by Thagomizer »

Seeing other posts on bugs munching bugs, I realised I have I can add to the gallery of photos of the Diners Club. Here are some shots I took of an ambush bug with an unfortunate fly it had captured.

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These were taken with a reversed Pentax 18-55 II kit lens at various focal lengths and thus, various magnifications. As this lens has no aperture ring, the aperture control tab of the reversed lens was held partially open using a short sectioin of tubing cut from a cotton swab. The resulting aperture is anyone's guess. I have recently picked up a PK lens to Nikon body adapter https://fotodioxpro.com/products/pkaf-nikf-pro-dclk (with optics removed) which will let me have a little easier time of controling the aperture of lenses like this in the future.

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

Nicely done! I have always liked ambush bugs.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

A-PeeR
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Post by A-PeeR »

These are well done... Looking forward to seeing more of your work in the future.

Thagomizer
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Location: London Ontario

Post by Thagomizer »

Thank you very much. I will certainly be posting more, especially once bug season starts.

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

I wonder how they ever catch such actively flying prey, since they seem so sedentary.

But on that point, I think they would be a great live subject for focus stacking. They have interesting textures that would show up well with that method.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Thagomizer
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Location: London Ontario

Post by Thagomizer »

MarkSturtevant wrote:I wonder how they ever catch such actively flying prey, since they seem so sedentary.

But on that point, I think they would be a great live subject for focus stacking. They have interesting textures that would show up well with that method.
I've not really tried focus stacking. I've done a bit of homebrew stacking of parts of up to three images using layers in photoshop, but I don't have any true stacking software. My computer would likely choke to death trying to deal with a stack of images. At some point I probably will try my hand at it, but in the meantime, I do enjoy the challenge of getting what I can in a single shot.

anvancy
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Post by anvancy »

Wonderful documentation!
www.anvancy.com

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Thagomizer
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Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2019 2:24 pm
Location: London Ontario

Post by Thagomizer »

Thank you!

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