(Edit: Big news! Jeff of www.nothoo.com has bought me a pro account, so now I can upload at larger sizes, post as many photos as I want, and a few other things I'm probably not aware of yet.)
Sorry about the quality, it's a crop. (Taken with the 135mm on a few extension tubes).
Found on a rusty bridge, which provided a nice background. A really beautiful beetle, I've never seen one before. The metallic, iridescent exoskeleton was fantastic, and in person the color seemed to shift from green to purple at certain angles. It attempted to fly away a few times, but always landed nearby (once in my beard), so it was easy to track.
Tags: entomology eyes small close macro macrophotography justpentax Pentax *ist DL DSLR k bayone prime lens extension tubes vintage vivitar zoom thyristor diy flash diffuser softbox opo terser 135mm f/2.8 beck mij insect bug metallic wood boring beetle
I realize this photo may not be a huge hit with you guys, and it's definitely not my usual fare - but I thought the photostream needed a non-salticid upload as I haven't posted anything but jumpers since July! A fascinating animal regardless of the quality of the photo.
I really don't know too much about these little guys (this one was around 3mm - pretty large for a mite!) but I'm guessing he/she may be from the genus Allothrombium (tell me if you have any ideas on a better genus or if you actually know the species!). I've read that they can be quite ferocious little predators, feeding on several different arthropods - including other velvet mites - though cannibalism doesn't appear to be too uncommon in the arachnid world. To read more about the family, here is a great paper on Trombidiid mites.
The photo is a crop from a single photo taken last May, and I actually don't remember which lens I used or what magnification the photo was taken at. I'm going to guess it was the 50mm reversed on extension tubes...
Photographing this one without blowing out the red proved to be a pain - how does it look on your monitors? Not too saturated?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a couple of new spider videos posted over at my youtube account here:
www.youtube.com/terser
...and a couple of new posts over at my artwork account:
www.flickr.com/panbasket
Tags: red velvet mite arachnid arachnology allothrombium trombidiidae trombidioidea soft close macro macrophotography pentax k200d dslr slr extension tubes asahi super takumar 50mm f/1.4 prime lens reversed m42 thread screw mount vintage vivitar zoom thyristor flash diffuser softbox opo therser thomas shahan bud valley oklahoma justpentax
Click here for a larger view as flickr tends to over-sharpen these smaller thumbnails!
Hope you guys aren't burned out on Habronattus males just yet! Because here's an interesting if not overtly flashy Habronattus species collected with the Elias Lab out in Arizona in June. Note the distinct white eyebrows and yellow setae on the pedipalps. This little dude had wonderfully vivid cadmium yellow chelicerae that he only revealed once or twice - and of course I totally missed the focus in my excitement - so - this and a few other "palps-up" shots were the best I could manage given the situation.
The image above is a crop from a stack of two shots taken with extenstion tubes and a reversed 50mm prime (would have ideally shot the image at full frame with my 28mm reversed - but it's seriously scratched and yields very washed out photos). The surface is a green (!) rock collected from his environment, while the backdrop is once again my shirt with a bit of a reddish leaf barging it's way into the composition.
One particularly cool thing about H. pugillis is the significant variation in appearance (specifically in those awesome eyebrows!) from mountain range to mountain range in Southern Arizona (specifically features referred to as the "Sky Islands") - more info on that below in the comments:
----------------------------------------------
I recently set up a facebook page and have added a bit of travel photos and art there as well - so if you're interested, it's here: www.facebook.com/pages/Thomas-Shahan/353850614637354
...and my relatively boring yet existent twitter is here: twitter.com/thomasshahan
Tags: Habronattus pugillis santa rita mountains Arizona Tucson june 2012 desert salticid salticidae arachnid arachnology entomology macro macrophotography close up portrait face fangs chelicerae palps hairy setae pentax k-x dslr slr 50mm f/1.7 smc K bayonet prime reversed lens extension tubes vintage vivitar thyristor flash homemade diy softbox diffuser thomas shahan taxonomy:binomial=Habronattus pugillis
I've reprocessed this image, as I wasn't happy with the other version I posted. It's sharper, larger, and has less color noise. The colors may be more accurate as well. They are still a little purple heavy, but that's how it came out of the camera. (Make sure to view it in the larger size, as flickr oversharpens these thumbnails, which makes the photo look strange.)
Taken at the Tulsa Astronomy Club's Star Party on the 4th of July, though a few of the exposures used were taken on July 5th, technically.
The bright, purplish area at almost the dead center is the Lagoon nebula, and the little nebula right above it is the Trifid nebula.
This is a stack of four, ~250 second, iso 800 exposures taken with a 50mm lens set to f/4 mounted to my Pentax *ist DL, piggybacked on my old 1970's Celestron C8 telescope. I did a pretty rough polar alignment, but the tracking seemed to work out well enough. I was planning on taking several more photos in order to reduce noise and increase detail, but some clouds rolled in and made any more photos impossible.
Regardless, I'm happy with the tracking, focus, definition in the dust lanes, color, and amount of light I was able to collect in relatively short exposures. Very little to no processing was done to this image besides added contrast and cropping, and the colors are just as they came out of the camera (which are probably a little too warm, but I'll go with it). I just need to work on noise now. It has fairly hot and humid when I took this, resulting in the camera becoming pretty damn noisy fairly quickly. Oh well, it's my best for now.
Next, I may work on a larger composite covering a larger portion of the sky, or attempt some higher magnification widefields with my various lenses (or if my polar alignment improves, some prime focus work on the Trifid or Lagoon nebulas).
Tags: space night astro astrophotography astronomy sky stars galaxy galaxies nebula nebulae lagoon trifid omega swan m17 m20 m8 clouds dust Pentax *ist DL DSLR 50mm smc asahi takumar k bayonet prime lens f/1.7 piggybacked vintage 1970's celestron c8 8 inch schmidt cassegrain reflecting mirror telescope tracking long exposure stacked opo terser deepspace justpentax astro:RA=271.526012741 astro:Dec=-24.1805113937 astro:pixelScale=74.25 astro:orientation=162.96 astro:fieldsize=20.63 x 14.91 degrees astro:name=The star Nunki (σSgr) astro:name=The star Media (δSgr) astro:name=The star Kaus Borealis (λSgr) astro:name=The star Alnasl (γ2Sgr) astro:name=The star φSgr astro:name=The star θOph astro:name=The star μSgr astro:name=The star 44Oph astro:name=The star 45Oph astro:name=The star ξOph astro:name=NGC 6383 astro:name=NGC 6416 astro:name=NGC 6494 astro:name=M 23 astro:name=NGC 6514 astro:name=M 20 astro:name=Trifid nebula
Click here to view the larger image as Flickr's resizing creates moiré artifacts!
I'm not sure if a fly can be any more beautiful than a female Striped Horse Fly (Tabanus lineola) and I doubt I could have found a more perfect specimen. I've been planning this shot for years now, and as I left the house heading out to my favorite bug spot the day that I took this photo, I thought to myself "how great would it be if I could find a cooperative T. lineola female today?"
And sure enough - almost as soon as I arrived at the park, I spotted a large female cleaning her eyes on the railing of the bridge I find salticids on! She was quite battleworn and uncooperative, and I gave up chasing her around pretty quickly. Soon after, another female landed nearby (the fly pictured above and below), and instantly caught my eye - she was smaller and cleaner with brighter, more deeply saturated eyes. I proceeded to photograph her from just about every imaginable angle and magnification I am capable of, and she sat cooperatively the entire time despite grooming her eyes and wandering about a bit.
It's worth noting that male Tabanids are completely harmless as they merely feed on nectar and pollen. It's the females (like the beauty above) that feed off vertebrate blood and have those wonderfully vicious scissor-like mouthparts that easily rip through human flesh. Despite the bad reputation, I haven't been bitten by one of these radiant flies yet - although that would make for a great photo should it ever happen. To determine the gender of large Tabanids - the males have compound eyes that touch in the center of the head (As seen here.)
To read more about the compound eyes of arthropods check out the Wikipedia page (featuring one of my photographs as an illustration) on ommatidium here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ommatidium
...and it's possible I may upload some new artwork on my other account soon:
www.flickr.com/panbasket
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The image above is a manual focus stack of two images taken at f/11 with an SMC Pentax-M 50mm f/2.0 prime lens reversed to a set of extension tubes on a Pentax K200D.
Tags: horse fly striped horsefly colorful female tabanus lineola tabanid diptera arthropod entomology insect bug macro macrophotography close portrait head compound eyes antennae pentax k200d dslr slr smc k bayonent mount 50mm m f/2.0 prime lens reversed extension tubes vintage vivitar zoom thyristor flash diffuser softbox oklahoma thomas shahan AdminFaveCCMP justpentax
© All Rights Reserved