Bug Macro 2

This is a crop of a previous image that is less manipulated. Only

resizing, levels, and sharpening. Comments are always appreciated.

Great shot, Pete, with well-exposed metallic shines and sharp focus plane. This composition works,undoubtly, but please consider this crop I attach you below, in order to eliminate distracting spots on the leaf and put off centre of interest in the frame. Best regards.

Too much saturation

Thanks Joan, for your comment and suggestion. The original was much larger and I cropped it a lot. I like your rendition too. Thanks for sharing with me. The bug placement works good with your crop.

 

Thanks Juha for your suggestion about the saturation. You'll have to blame the beatle for the saturation though cause this is how he looks. It's what attracted me to the shot to begin with.

Pete,

It looked a tad green, so I amde a slight adjustment. I like how you caught the irridesence on the beetle's back.

 

Thanks for commenting Richard. Yes, the irridesence is somewhat surprising at times. You're eyes must be younger than mine. I'm hard pressed to see much of a difference in your version except, perhaps, in the lighter tones. Had you not mentioned it I wouldn't have noticed. Time for new specs I guess.

pete, this is a wonderful shot, i really like the composition, with the leaf coming in from the right. i think the saturation is fine, but the green on the insect is distracting. I would consider muting, toning that down substantially (as well as the other colors), but leaving the rest. i would also crop a little from the left cuz there's a little too much dead space for my taste. but the clarity is very fine, and as i said, the composition is very enjoyable.

OK, I've taken what's been said and come up with a reasonable approximation. I can't crop much further without degrading the image; I only have so many pixils to work with here. As it is the print will be about postcard size :).

 

Let me know what you think.

Pete, thanks for considering my suggestion. At this web size (600 - 800 px), image resolution can be improved by means of digital noise reduction, in order to obtain cleaner crops. Without dealing with "full frame or cropped frame" controversy, I suggest you using this option in PS or another programs as Neat Image.

 

It's important to understand that noise reduction tools or sharpen masks works better with sharp images and uniform BG's, and your image suits both conditions. Thus, my cropped version offers a neat BG that let applying sharpen masks or saturation corrections after/before size reduction without loss of resolution.

 

It's too late tonight... better go to bed (LOL). Best regards.

 

 

Joan - check into Noise Ninja. I bought it some time ago when I got the Minolta A2. Anythng above ISO 100 with the A2 suffers from a lot of noise due to the small CCD. I was being a bit faceteous about the size of this image and all the cropping. I do try to not crop my images too much but for the web there's a lot of leeway. Printing is another issue altogether. Thanks again for commenting.

 

Pete

Pete, I wouldn't have noticed the yellow feet unless you mentioned it. A terrific macro and love the shallow DOF.