Acorn Weevil

[Ken Childs]

Canon EOS REBEL T1i
Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Manual mode
1/200"
F22
ISO 200
Canon 430EX: On, Fired
HH
ACR & CS5


One of the Acorn Weevils. The long snout is used to bore into an acorn and then the eggs are deposited in the hole.


Shot in a lightbox, cropped, curves, contrast, smart and high-pass sharpening.


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[Hayath Mohammed]

Fascinating creature this!
The subject's nicely lit, but the composition seems a little odd to me. Personally would liked more space on the top than the bottom :)

[Bob Miller]

Ken...wonderfully sharp and detailed! I agree that cropping from the bottom might produce a better crop!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Wonderful subject a really interesting subject. I get the impression there is a good deal of noise especially when I look at the feet, perhaps this is a lot of selective sharpening?? Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Now that is one cool bug! Apart from the points already mentioned, you seem to be losing a lot of detail, while you still have considerable color and luminance noise (see snout and eyes). Is this a considerable crop or is it related to jpeg compression to fit the BPN limits?

[Satish Ranadive]

Great creature.Lovely image.

Regards,
Satish.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Ken. This is one striking looking weevil with that very long "snout." I'm impressed that you got virtually everything within your DOF - and it gave you a great pose too! There are some good points raised above about detail, noise, and sharpness - I wonder if some of this may be due to shooting at f/22? (My macro lens loses a very noticeable amount of detail due to diffraction when I go from f/16 to f/22.) Being picky, I'm seeing some tiny bits of debris and/or sensor dust spots on the white background - this would be an easy fix to clean those up. :S3:

[Ken Childs]

I wonder if some of this may be due to shooting at f/22? (My macro lens loses a very noticeable amount of detail due to diffraction when I go from f/16 to f/22.)

Steve, you hit the nail on the head. By going to f/22 to try and get the entire bug in focus, the DLA of my camera kicked in and the image wasn't sharp. I tried to compensate with extra sharpening but obviously that didn't work very well. :e3