Blue Mud Dauber - Opinions?
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
Blue Mud Dauber - Opinions?
Hi All,
I want to solicit people's opinions here on what you think of the following images:
The first is a portrait of a Blue Mud Dauber (Chalybion californicum) taken with reflected light.
The second image is the same stack - but the eye has been overlayed with an auto-fluorescence image collected with UV LED.
I took this step because I wasn't terribly happy with the illumination of the eye in the reflected image - I think the antennae drops a shadow that is hard to deal with.
Do you have a preference?
I want to solicit people's opinions here on what you think of the following images:
The first is a portrait of a Blue Mud Dauber (Chalybion californicum) taken with reflected light.
The second image is the same stack - but the eye has been overlayed with an auto-fluorescence image collected with UV LED.
I took this step because I wasn't terribly happy with the illumination of the eye in the reflected image - I think the antennae drops a shadow that is hard to deal with.
Do you have a preference?
-
- Posts: 1975
- Joined: Sat Oct 07, 2006 10:16 am
- Location: Bigfork, Montana
- Contact:
-
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:26 am
Both are very nice. With the antennae shadow fixed, I would prefer the first one.
Maybe add two more lights to reduce shadows, one tilted at 12 o'clock position of the frame, and a second tilted at 2:30 o'clock position.
Maybe add two more lights to reduce shadows, one tilted at 12 o'clock position of the frame, and a second tilted at 2:30 o'clock position.
Last edited by zzffnn on Wed Jun 26, 2019 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- rjlittlefield
- Site Admin
- Posts: 23625
- Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
- Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
- Contact:
Re: Blue Mud Dauber - Opinions?
Are you talking about that band of ommatidia, about half way from front to back, where each single facet appears to be split into two narrow bright sections?zed wrote:I think the antennae drops a shadow that is hard to deal with.
I do not recall having seen that effect before, but yes, that seems consistent with ommatidia in that area reflecting a light source that is seen as split by the antenna passing in front of it.
I do find that effect pretty derailing, but even so I prefer the realism of the first image over the glowing-eye effect of the second.
--Rik
Thank you all for the great feedback! It looks like I will be revisiting the illumination for this guy this weekend.
There are 2 issues with the eye as Rik noted - the first is a line pattern projected by what I think is a flag I used to limit the flash on the background. I believe this is what created the line in each facet of that central band of ommatidia. I think I just moved my flash diffuser too far back and some light spilled over the flag. That stuff is so easy to miss in the single frames prior to the stacking.
The second issue is the dark band closer to the back that is the shadow from the antennae. The lighting here is from the upper right - but is somewhat side illuminated to generate the depth people have noticed. The eye might require more direct illumination. I'll have to play with this a bit.
For those who are interested - this was taken with a single studio flash, double styrofoam cup diffuser, 10X/0.28 Mitutoyo with a Nikon D850.
There are 2 issues with the eye as Rik noted - the first is a line pattern projected by what I think is a flag I used to limit the flash on the background. I believe this is what created the line in each facet of that central band of ommatidia. I think I just moved my flash diffuser too far back and some light spilled over the flag. That stuff is so easy to miss in the single frames prior to the stacking.
The second issue is the dark band closer to the back that is the shadow from the antennae. The lighting here is from the upper right - but is somewhat side illuminated to generate the depth people have noticed. The eye might require more direct illumination. I'll have to play with this a bit.
For those who are interested - this was taken with a single studio flash, double styrofoam cup diffuser, 10X/0.28 Mitutoyo with a Nikon D850.