Fun Friday Photo: Mantis Macro

I have been having too much fun lately with Macro. It seems the insects have been getting larger lately. (And more cooperative!)

This mantis had no problem letting me get within centimeters of it for a round of shots. Again, I used 76mm of extension tubes and a 1.4x tele-converter on a 100mm Macro lens hand-held. (no IS either!) I used a large strobe and pocket wizard TT5s to get the correct exposure. F/11, 1/200, ISO 200.

These two pictures are cropped just slightly for composition as the 3:2 aspect ratio was too rectangular for me when viewing these. Aspect ratio masking, or even selectable aspect ratio is definitely a feature I would welcome on pro dSLR cameras. I know a bunch of compact cameras have this feature. It is one thing to have extra image and crop later, but composing with the desired aspect forces you to see differently. I much prefer this and getting right in the shot versus cropping later. I’m not even sure masking in live view mode would help in this situation since there is not nearly enough light hitting the sensor in shots like these before the flash goes off.

Enjoy the weekend!

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My Friday photo posts are designed to be an outlet for images I create for myself outside of my usual work. I encourage people to really play and experiment and do something different in their creative art regularly. You can follow my twitter for more fun images throughout the week.