Dinner Time!
Was lucky to watch this Mantis eating some roaches.
Was lucky to watch this Mantis eating some roaches.
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Jul, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken as part of a macro project in June 2015 in a controlled environment. Unfortunately i have been told to keep the location disclosed and i will be faithful to that request.Time
This was taken early morning around 9am just before the first feed for the Mantis.Lighting
Lighting was the key for this. As i took the photo with an aperture of F18 to start off and with my iso settings at 100, it just wasnt quiet giving me the results i wanted. The image was a little under exposed and soft. I changed my settings to F16/iso 200 and moved our primary light source to the left of my subject so it fell nicely onto the plants and gave incredible detail on to the Mantis.Equipment
Camera : Nikon D750 Lens : Sigma 105 2.8 macro Hand held 1 light with a softbox attached set up to sync with my camera @ 1/160thInspiration
I have always had a passion for animals small or large and when this opportunity came up it was too good to pass. I never would have thought that i would be around 1-2ft away from a Female Praying Mantis never mind one of them eating. Macro work as always fascinated me and i think its like looking at a different world.Editing
We got the settings perfect in the camera. The only processing i did was up to the clarity and vibrance up by a slight amount and convert the file from Raw to PNG+JPEGIn my camera bag
My bag generally consists of: Nikon D750 with grip Sigma 105 2.8 Macro Sigma 50 1.4 Tamron 70-200 2.8 Manfrotto Monopod Yongnuo Flash Speedlite Yn-565ex Notepad Wireless Trigger Cable trigger Cokin ND filters Adapter ringsFeedback
Patience, i cannot stress how patient you have to be to capture this sort of shot. Single point focus works the best as you can really pin point where you want the focus to be. Eyes! Eyes! Eyes! it was crucial to get sharpness on the subjects eyes when you are doing this sort of Macro work. The eyes of the Mantis are quite jelly like so you will think they are not in focus but do not be fooled by this. Lighting is equally important since you want to be using a high aperture for around F14-18 ( light dependant ) to bring out the most detail.
