Scarab

[Lava Lamp]

I found this fella today and when I picked him up, he played dead and let me take his picture. He's about the size of the nail on my index finger. Any thoughts?

[shesells]

wow Lava, you outdid yourself!! This shot is visually stunning! He's beautiful. I love the way you cut out the background and included his shadow. Nice work and its also crystal clear. You did good!
Kit

[Nina]

I am very new at this so I do not have the most technical feedback but I do know what I like and I think this turned out to be a great shot. I Love it.

[wposloski]

A very nice macro! What lens did you use? Some areas look a little soft but I'm not sure if that is a DOF problem with a macro lens opened up or slight camera movement. If he was a co-operative subject, I wonder how this would have turned out on a darker "natural" background.
Very cool bug.
Bill

[gahspidy]

This is an interesting little specimen. great colors on this. Did you handhold this shot? I'm thinking that you could have benefitted from stopping down some more for more dof. Would be my only critique. I like the white surface with the shadow undewr it. A unique image.

[dadas115]

This is a very cool insect. I have never found this exact type before but we have similar beetles around here and I have spent some time photographing them and usually find them to be quite a challenge. From the way the picture looks it was taken using a flash or in bright sunlight. I like how you brought out the colors but to be the lighting looks a bit harsh. I don’t know if you brightened it in post processing or if it was the original exposure but the ends of the back two legs in the foreground have lost some detail seemingly to overexposure but it might just be a lack of DOF. I think this picture could benefit from more DOF. Also I would prefer to see it in a more natural setting though the white background has its nice points also. Here is an attempt of mine of a similar insect on a white background. At first I tried getting lots of DOF but I had a really tough time making it work on the white background since it required lots of light to get the shutter speed fast enough to prevent motion blur. I just didn’t like the way the flash made things look so I decided to open my lens up all the way and this was the result.

Nice capture,

Greg

[Lava Lamp]

I found this fella today and when I picked him up, he played dead and let me take his picture. He's about the size of the nail on my index finger. Any thoughts?

Thank you for all the comments. This was taken with a D70 and Tamron 90mm macro lens and a Tamron 1.4x teleconverter. Handheld. The specs were f/16 (f/22 with the TC) and 1/160 with on-camera flash set to -1.3 ev. Usually, I don't use flash if I can help it, but I'm tring to learn how to use it better. This particular beetle was tough to photograph because he was so reflective. The white patio table didn't help. I tried different spot metered settings and Matrix metering and flash for about 70 shots (thank goodness for digital.) Many are too dar, some are too oversexposed, like this one, but I adjusted it some in PS Elements and liked it. Perhaps I'll post one of the others.

[dadas115]

Your experience sounds pretty similar to mine. These guys are pretty tough to get really great shots of. I don’t know if you have tried this yet or not but if you find another one of these I have had some success putting a thin piece of tissue paper over the flash. Also bouncing the flash can help some. I really like this bug because of the large horn sticking up from his head, hopefully you can get some more shots of him.

Greg

[Tuna]

Nice colorful subject. Where do you live in the USA - Egypt, USA?

With such a cooperative subject, maybe a flash wasn't necessary. Shooting in shade or any diffuse type lighting might have allowed a more color-saturated exposure. I also agree about the DOF - either much more or a lot less. The existing DOF, in my opinion, looks a little un-controlled and distracting. I also agree that a different, maybe more natural, background might have been better.

Tuna