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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-16-2010, 11:13 AM
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Thanks for the info, I'll check it out - although I am pretty happy with Adobe CS3. Love those swallowtails!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-16-2010, 08:15 AM
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I know nothing about FastStone, but all the rest sounds reasonable. I hope bumping the ISO helps! I can't imagine why your images would be so noisy.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-15-2010, 05:46 AM
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I'd try higher ISO and avoid underexposing - I think you'd get a lot less noise. It may also have something to do with how you're resizing and/or sharpening your photos. I've occasionally introduced more noise during pp, and had to do things a little differently to avoid it. Are you shooting RAW? That gives you a lot more headroom to correct underexposure.
Julie
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-14-2010, 12:09 PM
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Those look awfully noisy for ISO 400. Were they extremely under-exposed or something? I don't get noise like that on my K100D even at ISO 1600.
Pretty butterflies, though!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-12-2010, 06:36 AM
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After going on and on about moths, I'll post some butterflies: swallowtails "puddling" in damp sand near a stream. There were more around. Sadly, they're backlit, in harsh midday sun - if I'd gone around the other side, I'd have frightened them away, and probably ended up in the stream!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-09-2010, 05:37 AM
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You're welcome, and I'm glad there are others who appreciate the moths. Given that they outnumber butterflies by at least 10 to 1, I think they deserve some attention! I find BugGuide quite useful: Welcome to BugGuide.Net! - BugGuide.Net. Some of the IDs are a little wonky, but you can at least get an idea of what you've got with a little digging.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-08-2010, 11:57 AM
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Sigh... this moth/butterfly distinction drives me batty (so to speak)! I was just ranting about this last night after I noticed a field guide I have says on the jacket blurb that it'll help you learn how to distinguish "harmless butterfly caterpillars from destructive moth larvae." Aaaargh! The poor moths aren't even caterpillars according to the author, they're generic larvae.
My rant, in a nutshell: 1) They're all in the order Lepidoptera, 2) The distinctions between them are full of exceptions, and most of all 3) "Butterfly" caterpillars are not all harmless, and not all "moth" caterpillars are. I find it very interesting that Pieris rapae, the cabbage white, is often referred to as the "cabbage moth", even though by the definition on the website referred to above, it is clearly a butterfly: club-tipped antennae, day-active, etc. And anyone who had tried to grow brocolli or other brassicas knows that they can be quite destructive! To add to the confusion - Tamia, I'm pretty sure yours is a skipper. They're all Lepidoptera, "butterflies" get their own superfamily, Papilionoidea, skippers are superfamily Hesperioidea, and "moths" don't rate a superfamily.
I'm on a mission to redeem the much-maligned moths. Yes, many of them are pests, but there are others that are harmless and spectacular. Luna and Io moths leap to mind. Of course I have no photos of those. But I do have an ash sphinx caterpillar, and an adult ash sphinx. Not sure if it's really a great ash sphinx or something similar, but it's definitely a sphinx, and it was on ash! The caterpillars are quite big (7 - 8 cm) and the moth must've been about 5 cm. They chewed up quite a few of the leaves on our ash trees, but it was late summer and the trees were nearly done with them anyway... ;)
I'm out to redeem moths, but I do enjoy butterflies, too. There are some lovely shots so far.
Julie
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