Beetle and Wild Rose

[Nancy Bell]

I photographed this beetle and wild rose in the lush undergrowth of an aspen grove nearby. I could hear cars grinding up the dirt road to go higher into the mountains for the holiday weekend, not even knowing they were passing a lush garden of wild flowers! I don't know what kind of beetle this is.

Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 100 f2.8 macro lens, I think I used the 20mm extension tube, and tripod. ISO 1250, 1/160, f6.3.

C & C most appreciated.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Nancy. This is one of the Flower Scarabs - likely in the Genus Trichiotinus. I like the soft lighting on this one. You also have good sharpness within your DOF and the beetle shows up well against the pink. I like the comp with the green sepal (?) helping to frame the image. The background greens look like they might be a little oversaturated (as viewed on my laptop). This is nicely done!

[Nancy Bell]

Steve, I processed this image a few different ways, including desaturating the greens a bit. I'll go back and look at that image. Thank you for the id!

[Diane Miller]

Wonderful detail and composition! Love it! I would think about the BG greens, but you don't know till you try it. My usual approach to greens (which may really be yellows) isn't just to desaturate, but to also try tweaking the hue a little.

[Mitch Haimov]

Nicely done, Nancy. Very graphic composition even w/o your subject, who looks like the love child of a bee and a beetle had a love child. :bg3:

[Allen Sparks]

Hi Nancy, I like the composition and the subject details are great. I also like the overhanging leaf. Agree about checking the background greens but either way this is a strong image. well done.... - Allen

[Bob Miller]

HI Nancy....really like the detail in beetle and the he is set off nicely against the pink flower. You might consider a slight vignette to draw attention into the center. TFS

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nicely composed Nancy, I like the exposure and colours though perhaps the background green is a little heavy. The beetle is well focused but not quite in an ideal plane- but then of course they don't always pose ideally do they. I fell the DOF is a tad short, had the extension tube not been used I think you would have had a more ideal DOF.

[Nancy Bell]

Thanks you all for your observations and comments. Diane, I like your idea of dropping the yellows a bit to lighten the bkgd. Jonathan, just what does an extension tube do to the DOF?

Mitch, my husband had a similar observation about the beetle, thinking it was more bee-like!

[stuart wanuck]

wow great

[christopher galeski]

nice one Nancy,nice and sharp,like the over hanging leaf,nice light and colors.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nancy when an extension tube (or bellows) is inserted between a lens and camera body the magnification is a function of the amount of extension (mm) and the focal length of the lens (mm). You can of course insert an extension tube behind any lens and there will be an increase in magnification, the more tubes i.e. greater the distance between the lens and camera body then the greater the magnification obtained.
If you insert an tube of say 50mm behind a 50mm lens the magnification will be x1. If you insert the same tube behind say a 28mm lens the magnification will be approx x1.5 but the lens to subject working distance will be very short. Extension tubes for field use are better inserted behind longer lenses say 100mm or more in order to have a viable working distance.

For a given length of extension tube, the longer the focal length of lens, the smaller the magnification will be. Similarly the amount of inbuilt extension in a macro lens will depend upon focal length, macro lenses of 100mm and 180mm have to be racked out much further than a 50mm lens to produce the same magnification at full extension (usually x0.5 with a 50mm lens and x1 with longer macro lenses).

Regardless of lens, if say a bee image is x0.5 magnification with a 50mm, 100mm or 180mm lens the DOF will remain the same but of course the distance from subject to camera will vary. This is why tubes can be useful with longer lenses such as 300mm or sometimes with zoom lenses, i.e you can maintain a longer working distance and have a magnification of say x0.3 which would be fine for damsels or dragons.

[Nancy Bell]

Thank you Jonathon for the explanation. Much appreciated! I need to get out my 300mm and add an extension tube to see what I get. Sadly, no damsels or dragons in my semi-arid pine/sage habitat.

[Mitch Haimov]

Ultimately DoF a function of magnification, regardless of how you achieve that magnification. E.g., make an image at 1:1 with a 100mm racked all the way out (closest focus), then reshoot the same composition with the same lens focused at infinity and 100 mm of extension behind it you'll get the same DoF in both images. (Admittedly not something one is likely to do except as an exercise.) Similarly, if you make two 1:1 images of the same subject with a 100 mm lens and a 200 mm lens you'll get the same DoF, tho other things will change. But if you use extension tubes to take your macro lens beyond 1:1 (presumably the reason for using extension with that lens) you will sacrifice DoF in the bargain. This is why the common wisdom that longer focal lengths yield less DoF is not strictly true. Tends to be true in practice--not likely to get many frame-filling images of birds with a 100mm lens, but if you use it to make a small-in-frame environmental portrait of a bird you'll have no trouble getting enough DoF to cover the bird.