Mantis

[OvidiuCavasdan]

40D, EF 100mm Macro
F 7.1
1/100 sec
ISO 500
Mantis in the garden, manual mode, natural light, tripod.
Yes...more dof would have been nice...tried also F13 but Bg was ugly...

[Ken Childs]

More DOF would have been nice but I think the bug looks great as is! It's sharp where it needs to be. I'm undecided about the sharpness of the leaf below the mantis. It so sharp it's drawing my eye away from the bug. I'll be curious to hear if anyone else notices this. It's probably just me. :)

[Steve Maxson]

Very sharp where it needs to be, Ovidiu, and the DOF doesn't bother me. Nice light and an excellent background. Love the way these insects can turn their head to look at you. Well done.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I like the shot very much indeed, I think you have a couple of choices here should a similar situation become available: consider taking a number of shots at differing focal points and use focus stacking such as helicon (use camera in manual mode and shoot jpegs) or maybe shoot several RAW images in manual mode, process them all identically and blend them together using Photoshop Layers, this way you will get more DOF but retain the muted background.

[Morkel Erasmus]

really like this - great pose, soft light and composition...

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Ovidiu,
Looks sharp enough where it needs to be! I think you handled it very well as mantis are big.....so tough to get entire bug in frame effectively. Here the leaves worked to block where the lower body goes OOF.....so nicely composed there. I think this works all around for me with a very difficult subject. You may want to try going to a vert and do just part of the body next time out......but as I said......this is very well done as presented!:cheers:

[Jim Bridges]

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[Julie Kenward]

Beautiful exposure, Ovidiu! I think the DOF on the bug is fine but since it trails off in the back of the bug I think Ken might be right in that the leaves might need a slight blurring, also. You might give it a try and see what you think.

You always managed to have such nicely exposed and "clean" images - keep it up!