Summer Insects

Here are some insects from last July and August.

great spangled fritillary (June)

Japanese beetle on hyssop (focus stack of 4 images)

large milkweed bug on milkweed (focus stack of 6 images)

male ebony jewelwing, a damselfly

northeastern hammertail, a robber fly (focus stack of 5 images)

Is it just me, or does this ant have transparent rings in its abdomen? (focus stack of 2 images)

immature large milkweed bug on milkweed (focus stack of 5 images)

twice-stabbed stink bugs on hyssop (focus stack of 4 images)

Zethus spinipes, a wasp, on celosia

Some More Bugs

More bugs from my yard.

Large milkweed bug on milkweed. Focus stack of 8 images.

Great spangled fritillary

A better shot of a bicolored striped sweat bee (previous post)

Orchard orbweaver. This is the underside of the spider. Focus stack of 2 images.

Bumble bee on a purple coneflower. Focus stack of 9 images.

Orchard orbweaver (Same species, different individual. This one was along the road in the ravine near my house. Also the underside). Combo of two photos: One of the spider and one of the shadow.

Condylostylus patibulatus. Neither the Seek app nor Wikipedia gave a common name for this long-legged fly. Focus stack of 6 images.

I need more magnification! This is the uncropped shot of the long-legged fly. I can crop the photo or zoom in to make the bug bigger, but the details don't look good because relatively few pixels are devoted to the bug.

Focus Stacking Advantages

Good macro photography technique says to get the subject square to the camera (parallel to the focal plane). That's because the depth of field--the zone that's in focus--is very shallow.

The camera was directly above this flat bug, so the body and head are in focus. Click an image to compare pairs. (f/6.7  1/3000s  ISO 800  #5 of 8 images)

Focus stacking most prominently added more of the flower. It also improved the bug's legs and antennas. There are artifacts, too, in the form of a reflection on the left side and distorted petal edges.

 

This fly is not square to the camera. It didn't respond when I asked it to move, so what could I do? I like the shot, though. (f/5.6  1/500s  ISO 800  #2 of 5 images in the stack)

Focus stacking added the fly's wings, the fly's legs, and the stem it's standing on.

 

I'm attracted to bees' faces, and this one was square to the camera. Without focus stacking, that's all I'd have. With it, I got its wings, legs, and hairs on its body. (f/6.7  1/350s  ISO 800  8 images)

None of these struck me as being particularly good... (f/5.6  ISO 800  1/750s)

 

 

 

 

... but the 5 pictures stacked together turned out nicely.

Sometimes I can experiment with how much background to include in the stack. (f/4.8  1/250s  ISO 1600  3 images)

Which one do you prefer? (5 images)

Backyard bugs

Here are some bugs from around my house. I've always thought "bug" was just a colloquial term, but it turns out a true bug is a thing. I started out wanting only to take pictures, but I keep learning stuff, dang it.

summer azure butterfly

Blinded sphinx moth. Crummy picture of an interesting moth.

Large milkweed bug (a true bug!). It's not on a milkweed, but the missing gardener says the plant is related to milkweed.

large milkweed bug nymphs

thread-waisted wasp

spotted cucumber beetle

green bottle fly?

Monarch caterpillar, also not on milkweed. I think that's poop (frass) in the bottom-right corner.

I can get some good shots of bugs with the lenses I have, but I end up cropping-out a lot of the image. For example, the caterpillar represents about a fourth of the entire image. I'm happy with the used D7000 and telephoto lens I bought from mpb.com, so I'm looking for a used macro lens for closer shots of bugs. I dithered (not unusual) between two and had pretty much decided on one, but all disappeared from the store before I clicked to buy (also not unusual).