Chrysididae from Armenia 2019

AlxndrBrg · Post by **AlxndrBrg** » Fri Nov 29, 2019 3:11 pm

Had a great trip to Armenia this summer, lots of chrysidid wasps and other insects. Gave me the opportunity to photograph live specimens of some species (and species groups/genera) which I dont think has ever been imaged live before. Haven't been shooting live specimens for a long time, so the unusable/usuable picture ratio is ridiculously high. But shoot enough crappy images and by the laws of statistics some are bound to accidentally turn out ok...

These should be the first live shots (at least to my knowledge) of a Pentachrysis sp., probably P. seminigra.

Females:

Males:

Harald · Post by **Harald** » Sat Nov 30, 2019 12:01 pm

Hi AlxndrBrg,

Wow!
What can I say? These are just great

Love them!

Tanks for the inspiration and sharing

dolmadis · Post by **dolmadis** » Sat Nov 30, 2019 12:04 pm

Agree,many congratulations.

What kit settings etc., did you use?

Thanks

John

AlxndrBrg · Post by **AlxndrBrg** » Sat Nov 30, 2019 3:40 pm

Thank you both!

dolmadis wrote: What kit settings etc., did you use?

Canon 6D with a MP-E 65 at around f:10, and a Meike Mk300 flash with a "John Hallmén"-pattern ice cream box diffuser
Edit: actually, I mostly used this kind of diffuser: http://makrofokus.se/blogg/2015/1/24/lampdiffusorn.html

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Sat Nov 30, 2019 4:09 pm

These are beautiful. If I could make some constructive criticism, though, the eyes are out of focus in nearly every one. It looks like you just barely missed getting them in focus. The eye shaprness is psychologically important; the unsharp eye gives an impression of overall unsharpness even though much of the body is perfectly sharp. If you could ensure that the eye facing the viewer were sharp (and I know this can be very hard in the field with moving bugs), the pictures would look better.

It might even be worth using a slightly smaller aperture, trading off a bit of resolution for added depth of field, if it proves too difficult to get the eye in focus with your current settings.

hayath · Post by **hayath** » Sun Dec 01, 2019 1:36 am

Rich color and detail!
Loved #2

AlxndrBrg · Post by **AlxndrBrg** » Sun Dec 01, 2019 9:52 am

hayath wrote:Rich color and detail!
Loved #2

Thanks!

Lou Jost wrote:These are beautiful. If I could make some constructive criticism, though, the eyes are out of focus in nearly every one. It looks like you just barely missed getting them in focus. The eye shaprness is psychologically important; the unsharp eye gives an impression of overall unsharpness even though much of the body is perfectly sharp. If you could ensure that the eye facing the viewer were sharp (and I know this can be very hard in the field with moving bugs), the pictures would look better.

It might even be worth using a slightly smaller aperture, trading off a bit of resolution for added depth of field, if it proves too difficult to get the eye in focus with your current settings.

Thanks for your feedback, I agree totally! I tried doing hand held stacks to improve the depth of focus, turns out it's really really hard, especially with moving critters. In hindsight I should have used a lower magnification and perhaps a bit higher f:stop (although I think I was well into diffraction-land already), to get better focus depth and trade it off with some image cropping. As it is now I have choose if I want the eye closest to the camera to be sharp and nothing else, or the far eye and some of the body, so I tend to chose the latter.
I also want to blame the image compression on this site a little bit

The ommatidia of the compound eyes are very small, it's a bit better on flickr when viewed at higher resolutions; https://www.flickr.com/photos/69669232@ ... 1981630578
Here are 3 shots picked specifically for having sharp eyes, the second one I kinda like, maybe should have chosen that above one of the original shots?

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Sun Dec 01, 2019 12:36 pm

Several of your images have come out around 55kBytes - the forum limit it 300kB which is usually enough.
DON'T let the forum software shrink the image, reduce yours to 1024 or less first, so the size is just under 300kB. That should be OK - apart from the pixel number of course!

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Sun Dec 01, 2019 4:38 pm

Well firefox has started lieing to me - the "image info" is misreporting.
However, when I download your images I get them at about 90kB, not 55-60 whic it reports. The one I uploaded is about 150kb. It looks only very marignally better, if you expand it. (It's 999 square - just testing if the forum s/w was doing something at 1000)

MarkSturtevant · Post by **MarkSturtevant** » Tue Dec 03, 2019 9:41 pm

Excellent picture of beautiful insects. I know how hard these are. Rare is the time to see one sitting still for even a moment.

MarkSturtevant · Post by **MarkSturtevant** » Tue Dec 03, 2019 9:58 pm

Some years ago I tried the John Hallman diffuser. It works well, but I wish mine had thinner plastic.