Northern Paper Wasp-Second picture added

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Thu May 15, 2008 8:48 am

Polistes fuscatus. Well, I finally found some time to sit and do a stack. This is a very common wasp here in the Northeast. Very agressive (up there with Hornets and Yellow Jackets). I used a reversed 50mm 1.8 I had from my old Canon FTb film camera on my canon 100mm macro using a 58mm to 56mm male to male adaptor. The 50mm was set to F1.8 and the 100mm was set to F20 (thank you Charles, your info from another persons post), ISO200. For lighting I used an 18w 6400K fluorescent table lamp & flash both diffused with white paper. Mirror lockup. 35 images stacked with Helicon Focus.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu May 15, 2008 9:31 am

It's nicely stacked.

I'm not too keen about the greenish background, though. It seems like the green is getting all over everything including the browns and yellows of the wasp. I wonder, is this just a matter of background color, or do you have a color balance problem?

Oh! I just noticed "...fluorescent table lamp and flash...". So this is mixed lighting? If both lights are actually contributing, it'll be very difficult and likely impossible to get the colors correct everywhere. You'll definitely need to do a custom color balance in any case.

--Rik

Particle_Man · Post by **Particle_Man** » Thu May 15, 2008 1:53 pm

You could gel the flash with flourescent gel so the light matches.

Impressive stack!

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Fri May 16, 2008 5:40 am

Well, I broke the first rule of photography....Set White Ballance

. I had the flash off to the left and the background card is only a few inches behind the specimen so the color is bouncing off the card. That is why the green glow is worse on the right side. I could not see that in the camera LCD screen. I was happy on how the stack came out over all. Just needs a little more tweaking. Thank you very much for the comments

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Fri May 16, 2008 7:55 am

I think that's really nice Doug! Good angle on the beast to show the wasp's interestingly shaped eyes!! I generally shoot wasps more from the front of the face (a lower angle), but then I tend to lose the top of the eyes behind the antennae or out of site over the top of the head...

I suspect the lighting is more down to the background colour reflecting onto the subject than the mixed lighting - at 18w the fluorescent light probably hardly had any effect on the output, when compared to the amount of light that comes from a flash gun, even on low power..

I'm basing this on the fact that Rik/Charlie tend to use 150w fibre optic lighting, and multiple second exposure - whereas I'm using macro flash with 1/160th second exposures - so I reckon my flashes have to put out at leas tthe equivalent of 10000w, even if only for a sub-thousandth of a second... (I know that's not quite right, you can't really compare a constand illumination light source with a flash in terms of wattage but I think it gives an idea of the relative 'brightness'...

However if I'm wrong then partical man's suggestion is the best bet to get around this issue.. (Plus if you can afford the hard disk overhead, shoot in RAW to avoid WB issues!!)

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sat May 17, 2008 7:25 am

Here is another stack of the same wasp. Side view. taken at the same time as the first. A lot less green glow in this view. Auto Color corrected in PSP

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Sat May 17, 2008 10:53 am

Doug,

Nice shot! I like this view much better. It looks like you are getting excellent detail with your lens combo. The background is less green... but... well... I must admit I'm still not too crazy about the color

A couple thoughts...
Is ISO 200 the lowest you have? If not, then why not try a lower ISO. This is a completely controlled situation, so there is really no need to boost the ISO. With my cameras ISO 200 is excellent, but if I look really closely and compare to ISO 100 I think there is a difference.

It might also be worthwhile to set up on a very detailed subject and run through the f-stops on the 100mm lens. Looks like you are getting excellent detail here, but since you are "stacking" it is not imperative to get max DOF for each frame, you are more interested in best resolution. You may find that a larger stop (somewhere between f8-f16) might actually provide slightly better resolution. Such a test will also let you determine just how far you can stop down in situations that need to be taken in a "single shot". Generally I think you'll find that a "stack" will be taken at a larger aperture (to get greater resolution) while a "single-frame" picture requires sacrificing a little resolution in order to get good DOF. But with some lenses (and lens combos) used at certain magnifications, you'll find that if you stop down to a certain point the resolution gets so bad it's no really suitable to use.

Roy Patience · Post by **Roy Patience** » Sat May 17, 2008 9:12 pm

Doug,

I really like the perspective of the second one better, it gives me a better sense of what the wasp looks like. You really did a good job with this one.

Roy