Whoops... missed Launch pad...and it's my favourite...I'd cropit a bit smaller. More DOF would be great. Be mercenary. Freeze your insects and focus stack.

Insect macro is not something I've ever tried, though I've admired a lot of it, especially Nass's focus-stacked images. I think it's a genre that produces a lot of outstanding images, so I'll be brutal and compare it to some of the amazing stuff I've seen, but would have absolutely no idea how to produce.

Firstly, nice backgrounds in all of them; smooth, uniform colour backgrounds seem to work best in insect images. No distraction. These images mostly look sharp in the right places, though that's one thing that frustrates me, such limited DOF.....


BTW, isn't it about time the minimum file size here was increased to allow for people with decent monitors?



The first one, I'd crop it smaller, lose about about 30% of the area but keep the same composition. If it's shot on the K3, plenty of pixels to play with. Love the eyes.

The second one (Looking Straight at You?....aren't numbers easier, this isn't a photo comp where titles are needed) The composition is too central, doesn't work for me. Is it a crop from the first shot? I think it would work better with the insect on a third.

Early lunch... with so much oof, I'd prefer a much tighter crop. Or a bit of focus stacking, If you could pop the spider in the freezer for a while. Then we could see it's lunch. The eyes look a bit lost in a world of blur.

Eye (not quite in focus, that eye) and Clinging On (once again, two crops from the same image?),...what I presume are hairs look like halo's, possibly due to the forum re-sizing. Clinging on, how about cropping off the left side, putting it on that ubiquitous third again? I'd crop it to get rid of that brighter stalk to the left of the creature.

Damsel in distress....not as good as the previous images. Looks a bit soft, but once again I'd crop a bit from the left. The leaves are the most interesting part of this image for me.

Female common blue...could imagine this in an insect book, but the background is a bit dull compared to the rest.

Bumble bee...wrong bit's in focus, bin it.

The last one.... nah. You've not quite nailed the focus. The funny thing on it's head is the only bit uber-sharp.

I don't think either would work on an aircraft, unless I did it in the cabin....

Have a look at this thread....link

It's strange that Puggy mentioned cabin pressure, someone sent me this link....link

I'll try that, John.

That's a good idea, I'll try it out.

If it had focused on the window nothing would be in focus, Chris. I don't know what "distant view" means in the exif. One reason the GR shots are totally unaffected could be because I set the focus to infinity, so the camera is not having to focus at all. I have seen yellow smeared in a couple of images, which is why the thread initially had it's title, but I think that was as a function of whatever is happening with green. The more red there is, the less the problem. I've had no problem with blue either, ie water. I also get less of the problem if there is sky in the image.

A Bayer sensor has twice as many green sites as red or blue, and I'm wondering if this is somehow a factor. But if so, I can't work out why UV would aggravate it, which I'm pretty sure it does.

I don't think you can do that with RAW, John?

I do notice when printing images. I had a flight over Greece where all the shots were unusable.

Compare this shot, with hardly any green in the image, also a 100% crop. The focus of the whole image is far better. I think somehow green is throwing the focus out, and it makes areas of green especially look more blurred. Look at the definition of the buildings, which are smaller than in the previous shot.