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Scolopostethus grandis
A friend told me that this image of mine was used in a book by Lars Skipper about Denmark's seed bugs (Danmarks frøtæger) that came out recently - probably taken from Wikimedia Commons where I uploaded it a few years back (as Public Domain / CC0 of course).
http://www.apollobooks.dk/DKfroetaeger.htm
I feel this endorses the quality enough to have it here too :o)
Scolopostethus grandis Horvath, 1880 is a species of Seed bug with a scattered distribution over large parts of Europe, from the Atlantic eastward to the Caucasus. It overwinters as an imago, resulting in adult specimen being found all through the year.
Similar species: True Bugs
comments (3)
And know that as much as we appreciate high quality images, do not put the bar too high for yourself. By your self-critical standard, you possible withdraw images that would be very useful to the community, not to mention they'd likely disagree on your self-critical assessment. Posted 7 years ago
The reasons for sharing my stuff as Public Domain are outlined here on wikimedia commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Arp#About_licenses
Over the years quite a few images of mine have been picked up by others and put to good use and it's always a joy to see that. One of the more popular ones must be this one that I created somewhere around 2007:
That was all with my first 4mpx-plastic-toy-thingy-sorry-excuse-for-a-camera Olympus u480.
The image above was shot in 2013 with my Canon SX100 compact, which was more or less a bad buy (more Mpx, but hardly better images than the old 480 that was worn out by then) - the image has horrible depth of field and the flash caused loads of irritating small reflections everywhere, but at least the structures/patterns on the animal are discernable.
I still don't spend serious money on my *cough*photo kit*cough* - current workhorse is a 15 Euro 2nd hand Fuji S5800 (8Mpx bridge type camera) with a Raynox macro "filter" screwed onto the fixed lens (total setup under 100 Euros). Even with that it is clear that the camera/glass are not what makes the image; more than anything else, the trick is to get the lighting right. I use all sorts of make shift "soft boxes" made out of used yogurt cups and the like, stuck over the fixed build in flash, to spread the light as good as possible.
If space allows it really helps to make some of the light come from behind the object too. A longer cap carrying the light over the subject was used here:
Some images come out nice, but most are still horribly useless. For the recent Palomena prasina eggs and L1 series you liked I must have around 100 images of each scene that are useless and maybe 4-5 that have the focus, dof and lighting right *rolleyes* so it's always a bit tedious to sit down and select the usable ones from a session. I usually only do that when I have a reason (such as showing e.i.g. what was going on in her pictures of the recently hatched eggs ;o)
Most images I shot years ago (such as above) should really be done again at some point, with a bit more love and care and with the (limited) insights I've come to over the years :o) Posted 7 years ago, modified 7 years ago
I'm quite interested in your soft box experiments. I've only recently started to use one, a fold-able one. Posted 7 years ago