Unwanted guests

[Robert O'Toole]

This single Flat Bark Beetle and about 1,479,4870 family and friends recently moved into my apartment so there was no shortage of unwilling subjects. If you fill your bean bag with any type of organic filler I would recommend emptying it before bringing it in the house, otherwise you may pick up hitchhikers as I did.

This Bark Beetle was alive when I made the image. The white egg shaped object is a grain of rice for scale, handheld at about 5.25X.
F16 was the best compromise between sharpness and decent DOF.

NIKON D300 and Sigma 150mm f/2.8 MACRO EX DG with reversed Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D AF with a single Nikon SB-R200 speedlite. Manual mode 1/50 @ F16 manual Flash 1/8th power. ISO: 200.

Robert

[Robert O'Toole]

Forgot to mention that this sp. of Bark Beetle are 3 mm in total length, the rice grain is about 5mm total length.

Robert

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Robert,
You know.........you make it hard to critique when the subject we are talking about is this small! This type of shot puts the degree of difficulty to some astronomic place.........but we must judge the image on how it looks! The grain of rice has become overpowering in the frame. While the armored look/texture of the beetle and even DOF are acceptable with this small of a creature........the washed out look on the rice is for me too much. Do you think a profile presentation would have been better???.......although for the life of me with something this tiny.......I can't figure out how you would go about doing that!

[Robert O'Toole]

Wow Roman, thanks for the thoughfull in-depth response :)

I know what you mean about the rice, there is texture in the origional but at 700-800 there is no way to show the minute texture that is there at 4000 px. It gets lost in the downsizing. The whites are only 230-235 or so they arent lost, just missing the texture. I know what you mean though it looks like a big flourescent light bulb.

There were images with less rice grain showing but with the grain large and the subject smaller it really shows the size scale I think.

Also I did have a few profiles but the DOF was so thin it made the image look way soft. It seems like the DOF at F16 is about .5mm!

Thanks for your time!

Robert

[Robert O'Toole]

Okay I converted another a stop or so darker exposing for the rice grain than blended it with the posted image, a pseudo HDR almost. I though it looked too dark but it does tone down the whites.

The problem now is that the repost grain of rice is gray!

I think the rice looks more realistic in the first image.

Robert

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Robert, I like the repost. so thats what these little guys eat???:eek:

[Robert O'Toole]

Hi Robert, I like the repost. so thats what these little guys eat???:eek:


They were munching on the whole corn in my BLUBB bean bag for who knows how long. There were 1000s or 100,000s.

Glad they are so small and harmless:)

Robert

[John Cooper]

Some serious magnification here Robert!!! You did well to get the main features pin sharp.
The grain of rice was a good reference to size but maybe a brown-rice grain would have done the trick without the brightness :)

[Harold Davis]

hi robert! wanted to comment on this last night but wasnt sure what to say. i like the original better than the repost. i think the whites in it work better with the blue bg and look more realistic. i like the way the whites glow in the original. the first thing that came to my mind was that the blues and whites almost look cartoony. was thinking you could call this SuperBeetle!! i like the image. hope you post a couple more from this series.

[Robert O'Toole]

Thanks Harold, well since it was a set up I wanted to use a bold, non green or brown color. The blue is the painters masking tape I used to hold the rice grain in place. If you have some of this tape you might recognize the color.

Robert

[John Cooper]

Thanks Harold, well since it was a set up I wanted to use a bold, non green or brown color. The blue is the painters masking tape I used to hold the rice grain in place. If you have some of this tape you might recognize the color.

Robert

Hi Robert - the more I look at this the more it resembles an insect on a surf-board :)

[Keith Kennedy]

Robert,

A good shot of a saw-toothed grain beetle (family: Silvanidae or 'flat grain beetles') one of the most common stored grain pests. Sounds like you had a decent population. Sealing bean bags in large clear ziplock bags is a good practice when using any new grain/filler as a way to contain these guys in case the grain is infested.

Keith

[Robert O'Toole]

Good ID Keith you are correct. I thought it was some kind of bark beetle!

Robert