Some mixed bug shots from the garden taken yesterday.

Brian V.

Frog hopper walking down the car



A rather damp baby globular springtail - 1.3mm body length



A rather small marmalade hoverfly taken at 2:1 FF



Dung fly feeding (honey/sugar spray strikes again)



Suprise visit from a cabbage white butterfly





Crop from above shot

Nice shooting mate. Love the detail your crops retain, very useful tool that.

mark

Hi Brian,
Just as a matter of interest, does your honey, sugar and water mixture hold the attention of spiders? I'm trying to think of something that might keep little jumping spiders 'occupied' for a few moments while I awkwardly approach and snapaway?
Thanks for any input.
Bruce...

Wonderful set Brian

Thanks for the comments all

Mark - the 5Dmk2 scores heavily on IQ/resolution but it tends to get lost with websize shots.

Bruce - no doesn't hold spiders attention except in the odd case where I had a small web spider that seemed to learn that the fruit flies were being attracted in one situation and stayed around bushwacking them. The only thing I've ever managed with jumping spiders is to rotate a finger around them - you can sometimes get them slightly puzzled and facing in the right direction for a moment or two doing this

LordV wrote:
Bruce - no doesn't hold spiders attention except in the odd case where I had a small web spider that seemed to learn that the fruit flies were being attracted in one situation and stayed around bushwacking them. The only thing I've ever managed with jumping spiders is to rotate a finger around them - you can sometimes get them slightly puzzled and facing in the right direction for a moment or two doing this

Thanks for your help Brian.

lovely shots esp the BF

I found myself especially attracted to the hoverfly, in no small part because of the almost sculptured lighting+composition I enjoy in so many of your photos.

The spectacular fine detail seen in many of these photos is as always very enjoyable, in part because of your selective use of shallow depth of field when appropriate and consistent with your goals for a given critter and scene.

---------------------------
Do you think you'll stay with your 5DII for your springtail photos this season? I think I recall correctly that you have been considering using a cropping camera body for their photos but I wondered if your FF springtail photos might yield an equal or perhaps superior result.

Thanks michael and DQE for the comments

Brian v.