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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
10-24-2023, 07:33 AM
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Surprised to see these out and about. This individual was safely ensconced in the seedpuff, but came out to look around when we held the stem still for taking pictures. All images are somewhat soft as the wind never died down. First image is a two image stack. My sister either held the stem still, or held the diffuser. Definitely a two person shot. Xpost.
Ladybug's Home
Ladybug |
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-21-2023, 08:18 AM
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I've never seen the brown variety. I hear them this year, but not many. There are only a few shells here and there.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-20-2023, 09:50 PM
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Ready for the ants. Testing sensor for defects. Crop, ISO 100, 3 sec, f5.6. 200mm, 221 images
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-01-2023, 06:27 PM
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This evening's Camo. Original & reduced crop.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-30-2023, 05:15 PM
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Was excited to see a monarch catepillar this morning. Looked this evening, and saw three more. Two bigger, & two smaller, so likely a visit from two different females, one I saw pausing here and there around the plant. Saw this bonus leaf hopper shortly after the catepillar this morning. Best I could do with breeze. The K-1 sensor doesn't like the hopper's shade of red.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-30-2023, 05:02 PM
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I've not seen more than three in an evening in our yard. Ten years ago there were dozens.
---------- Post added 07-30-23 at 07:07 PM ----------
Nice stacks & butterfly!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-19-2023, 12:43 PM
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The PentaxDA 18-250 lived on my K20D, K-5 &K-5IIs as my walk about for years. This year it froze at 18mm. I got a used replacement today.
This is the sharpest handheld test image at 250mm. It's no macro lens, but I think this is reasonable sharpness for a zoom lens of this era.
OOC crop at actual pixels.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-18-2023, 11:50 AM
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Bumblebee on bergamot setting in for the night last night. Females go to nest.
Was an exciting morning yesterday. Saw first Monarch in over a year. She briefly landed here and there on my swamp milkweed. Hopefully she laid some eggs. She did not stay around long enough for photos. Even though we were twenty feet away she seemed to be aware of our presence and was skittish. I likely won't approach for any close shots of monarchs for fear they won't stay around to lay eggs. Called Mom & Dad to the door to watch, as one never knows how many chances are left to view them
Ready for Bed |
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-14-2023, 12:46 PM
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Nice image. I did not expect the image quality to be that good from the 55-300 PLM.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-12-2023, 06:40 PM
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This cropped image of milkweed bugs on butterfly weed is one of the four images extacted from a K-1 pixel shift file taken in 2016.
Just because the pixel shift is unusable does not mean that the idividual images contained in the pixel shift are bad.
Extracted with DCRaw PS64.
Large Milkweed Bugs by Roger 0691 |
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-11-2023, 02:49 PM
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I enjoy the look of the chromes. Even scanned, some of the character comes through.
It would probably take a while, but to scan and do a transition slide show/movie would be fun to see.
I've always wanted to do a monarch, but it appears that my chances are less and less as time goes on. Last year was the first year that there were no eggs laid on my plants, and there are none thus far this year. I had quite a few three years ago, but they disappeared. I suspect predatory wasps. If I happen to get any this year, I will place a door screen cage around the plant to protect them.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-11-2023, 12:27 PM
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Two image and 5 image PS stacks. I do not think I gained much in resolution for this subject, but do have a gain in color information when I
use PS. I noticed a gain in resolution when viewing scales on a moth I did a few years back using my K1. I suspect that the increased
pixel density of the K33 makes it more challenging to get increased resolution on live insects.
Yesterday I walked around the tree twice with my thrid grade nephew looking for insects before I finally spotted this individual. x-post.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
06-27-2023, 05:11 PM
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This is all I've seen in the line of pollinators on my butterfly weed. It will be interesting to see how good a job they do.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
12-15-2022, 08:30 PM
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The eyesight...it is a changin' :( Liveview helps a bit! :)
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-12-2022, 10:25 PM
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Here is a video of a cicada emerging and pumping up it's wings. I gave it the opportunity to climb from the chain link fence to a stick so I could relocate and better document the process.
The video is composed of several videos spiced together. The total shooting time was about 1:15 over a span of 1:45. I I batch edited about 139,000 frames and re-encoded most of the video at 120fps to shorten the watching time to 19 minutes.
The light was relatively low. It was shot using my K-1 and 200mm last summer. I was unable to get any usable footage in the low light using a K-3 III. That may or may not be the camera's fault. 
This is one of my few efforts at video, and it shows. Go easy on me! I hope you find the metamorphasis interesting.
Due to file size (medium quality > 3GB) I was unable to upload the video to flickr, so it is on my Google drive. As it takes up a fair bit of the free drive space, It will only be there until I need the space for something else. Xpost
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-12-2022, 01:33 PM
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Xpost. Three image stack taken after dark. Tried for a deeper stack, but the flash evidently woke this male up pretty fast. Upon review, there were lots of tiny movements, not to mention a breeeze I could not see.
I was almost at the limit of the flash/diffuser. i never could have pushed an underexposed PEF of the old K20D this far. That is one of the things I really like about the K-1. Image resized from 12.6MP crop.
Male Bumblebee on Bergamot by Roger |
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-09-2022, 06:58 PM
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Xpost. Sunday evening I took pictures of these yellow flowers. On arriving home, I realized I had an OOF praying mantis.
Monday I returned to try and find the little insect. It was still on the same flower, although hiding under the adjacent flower.
Second image is crop of the first.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-06-2022, 06:54 PM
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Great Job, Walt! I like your early morning shoots!
---------- Post added 07-06-22 at 08:58 PM ----------
Nice ant. It seems like they never stop moving.
Nice Bumblebee captures!
---------- Post added 07-06-22 at 09:07 PM ----------
From my Elsa Spath clematis. Thirty-three image stack with a bonus. I did not see the leafhopper (severe crop resized 2x up) when I shot the stack, so that was a nice surprise.
Elsa Spath Clematis (focus stack) by Roger
Elsa Spath Clematis - detail with leafhopper (focus stack) by Roger |
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-17-2021, 06:26 PM
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Cicada Shell. Saw the owner, but did not have time in the evening to shoot, so got this the next day.
Several years ago planted my feet in one postition for 15 minutes trying to avoid moving the subject of a stack that was on mushy ground.
Felt a light movement on my leg and one of these cicadas was halfway up my calf. Had glasses off so it looked like a giant spider.
Got some nice images of it emerging.
K-3 Mark III & HD Pentax-DA 55-300mm F4-5.8 ED WR, 300mm, minimum focus distance. Pixel Shift. Actual pixels of crop below are 3200x1800.
Cicada Shell |
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
10-30-2017, 12:14 PM
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That's my experience in central Illinois as well. Loads of insects to collect in the '60s & '70s. We were even required for HS biology to make collections, and the ones with the highest number of unique insects in good condition got the highest grades. Sadly, I find myself kindly asking children not to do the collecting and chasing I so dearly enjoyed. Most when they hear the reasons are happy to comply.
When we drove from IL to KS and OK once a year to visit relatives, there were always a couple monarchs or swallowtails in the car's grill at each stop. I always checked. Sometimes there were a whole bunch. The only adult monarch I saw this year was in a butterfly house.
The war on milkweed and weeds in general continues. I grew up in a rural farming area. From the perspective of many farmers, the eradication of the the milkweed is a cause for celebration, and the loss of the monarch a sad unfortunate consequence. Before the advent of high powered pesticides, I was paid to walk bean rows and physically remove weeds. Strong stemmed weeds like milkweed could get into the head of the combine and literally stop it cold, and in extreme cases, result in broken machinery, and a loss of harvest due to droppage or weather as the harvest just waited in the field. Seed from weeds contaminate the harvest which results in a much lower price per bushel. No one was paid to walk the ditches and roadside to take out the weeds. So a lot of habitat survived for years beside the fields.
Today farmers use efficient herbicides. Corn and beans are engineered to resist the herbicides. The rows are mostly clean when you look down them. Roadsides, ditches and un-farmable areas of fields are more often sprayed. There are few farmers who can afford to hire manual labor to remove weeds--as was the practice when I was a child. Farmers complained back in the '70s when I walked that they could not find people willing to do the job.
Bottom line, if milkweed and monarchs, and other weeds and the insects they produce are to survive, I think folks need to be intentional about planting these species on their own property, even if the result is not as "pretty as a bed of roses." We need to produce habitat in parts of our own yards. This could be as simple as "what insects do I like?" and "what plants are necessary to feed them?" Next time something is munching our plants, let's take the time to find out what is munching. We might decide that the munching is not such a bad thing, and be willing to share a few plants! :)
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