Mantis #2

Nice, John. Caught in it's characteristic pose. Nice colors, comp., and exposure. BG works very well. I might have tried a little tighter aperature to get more in focus as lower part of it's body looks soft. You had some ISO to work with on your camera before any image issuess arise. My 60D which I think has the same sensor as yours can easily take 800. Thanks for posting.

Thanks Peter, I should have tried a higher ISO.

Insects can be a real challenge to photograph because, as you mentioned, just as we get them in focus, they move! I have found one thing that helps me with insects is to shoot in burst mode. As soon as I get my focus right I just hold down the button on the cable release and let the camera action fly! Often out of all of those one or so is clear. Sometimes you can catch very interesting behaviors that way too.

This guy looks like he is checking you out, John! You achieved good focus on the face which is most important. Even the antennae are sharp which is usually hard to accomplish. Classic pose you've captured, too.

I understand Peter's point, but, on the other hand, a higher fstop would have brought the nicely blurred background more into focus, which would not have been desirable, IMO. The face, antennae, and upper torso and arms are all sharp, so I think your chosen fstop was a good one. I like the pose and to me, this is an excellent image of this PM.

Great image. It looks slightly underexposed and if the plane of the subject is not parallel to the sensor plane you have to stop down slightly. Being very close to the subject the BG will still cream out by stopping down to something like F 8. I know this because if I have a good shot I will progressively stop down on each exposure....given I have time. In post you can then pick the sharpest file with a decent BG that you can work with. Obviously with fast moving subjects and hand held you simply have to have more DOF at the beginning. For you image it doesn't bother me that the lower portion isn't quite sharp.