Ant practice

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

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Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Ant practice

Post by Beatsy »

From a 20-minute macro session along with my coffee this morning. Shooting ants (again). They're frustratingly small, always moving, always on the peonies in the garden and dead convenient for practicing handheld focus chops in random spare moments. I admit I'm a bit bored with the limited set of poses that work with the shallow DoF on these squitty little things, but I keep coming back. I'm mainly after the jaws actually *doing* something, but rarely get those, as was the case today. Next time.

The best two from the session. Sony A7riv, Canon MP-E65/2.8 @ 3x, 1/200th, f/8, ISO320. Off camera flash and diffuser plonked nearby - radio triggered. Raw files were converted with DxO PureRAW. Hard cropping, exposure adjustments and colour tweaks done in Capture One, then finished with Topaz Sharpen AI (focus mode) for export.
ant3x-sm1.jpeg
ant3x-sm2.jpeg
Here's an "actual pixels" crop from the image above for details
ant3x-sm3.jpg

MarkSturtevant
Posts: 1946
Joined: Sat Nov 21, 2015 6:52 pm
Location: Michigan, U.S.A.
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Re: Ant practice

Post by MarkSturtevant »

These are excellent pictures! Very high quality.
Perhaps to get the ants to do what is wanted, they could be given something to feed on. Either meat or fruit, I am not sure.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Re: Ant practice

Post by Beatsy »

Thanks Mark,

I have used various baiting strategies which does attract them as you'd expect. They run off with particulate stuff. The best "stay and eat" bait is honey, but then most of the pix are ants with their noses buried in a blob. Much as I moan, chasing them for focus is really good practice anyway - so I don't use baiting often. They get a bit more aggressive when the queens are flying though and often square up to each other as they approach a group already feeding. So I will spot a few drops around at that time. I've seen a handful of really good standoffs, with ants reared up on hind legs and squaring off like boxers, jaws splayed *really* wide. Very dramatic and it would look great at this scale. I want that picture! But sadly, each attempt to date has been a miss, sharp in the wrong places. Patience and repetition should pay off eventually though. I hope.

MarkSturtevant
Posts: 1946
Joined: Sat Nov 21, 2015 6:52 pm
Location: Michigan, U.S.A.
Contact:

Re: Ant practice

Post by MarkSturtevant »

My little experience in baiting ants for photography comes from our apple trees, where wind-fallen apples get opened up by squirrels and that brings in the wasps, flies, and ants - though never the larger carpenter ants which would be easier to photograph. But the ants that are there just sit and engorge themselves, and you can see they get quite plump with apple juice.
The ant fight picture would be amazing. Done at a low angle. Its on occasions like that that I cook up plans to try to get action pictures via taking short video clips. Single frames can then be selected. But then of course there is the lighting challenge.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

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