A passion of mine..... Captive.
We ,Shaz and I have a deep love of amphibia. We keep a room full of dart frogs,in part something to keep shaz motivated as her health isn't great,but she's a grafter so the therapy of care helps. We are staunch supporters of sustainability,slowly but surely models are appearing in S America where by through biocommerce locals are being given a chance to gain revenue from breeding these frogs in sustainable ways. Obviously once local folks see the rainforest and it's occupants as a revenue stream it is valued and less likely to be cut down. It's all early days but for a group of animals that are facing the biggest global extinction since the dinosaurs sort of wonderful.
I've taken probably thousands of froggy pics and would really like to up my game. and learn how to do this properly. At this time I really need a bigger tripod for frogs in the upper reaches of our room. Basically at this time my best photos come from using a technique of a very slow shutter speed aperture set around f/13 and iso quite low. These little fellas sit very still at times,so i've used this to try and get the dof up. I'm not in a position or have the expertise to use something like focus stacking. i'm also wary of using flash on my precious kids . I suspect since being here that my images aren't as sharp as they could be using this technique as there might be tiny movements in the apparently still frog that are beyond my perception. So I thought I'd share something a little different with you.
This is a male Oophaga histrionica redhead. He's bred here hunting you should be able to spot the springtail he's honed in on. The genus oophaga show very high and sophisticated parental care known as obligate egg feeders. Basically mum and dad lay eggs on land and fertilize and care for until hatch,mum then carries tad to a suitable deposition site...say a bromeliad and then goes back laying infertile eggs,for the tadpole to feed on,which is pretty much all tad eats.
Canon 1Div lens canon 100mm macro f/2.8 non is. iso 800 f/13 TV 0.4 off a tripod with a ten second delay on the shutter to allow for any vibrations to subside (tripod is inadequate for this job,but all I have at this time). BBfocus then shutter fired after focus would have been aimed at the eye but I have no red box in dpp to confirm as obviously focus wasn't active on shutter fire. Processed in DPP4 adjusted shadows up one highlights down 2 WB from daylight,with eye dropper, fine detail on picture style. aprox 60/75 % of ff,moved gamma.
Hopefully this should show direct from my computer. I've had to pull quality down on the jpeg to 5 but it appears I am now under the 400kb limit of a 1200x800 size file and has loaded. As of yet I can't figure how to show the pic in the thumbnail box. But hopefully i've made some progress all be it painfully slow.
Many thanks for all help and comments given previously so generously on my other posts
take care
Stu
Originally Posted by Diane Miller
