Throwback Thursday: A hover-fly and an Ad

APS-C, f16, 1/1000, ISO 2,800, 105mm (~157mm FX)

Today I have not only an image for you, but also a special offer. Skylum is offering their software Luminar 2018 with a special discount. The offer is starting today and valid until Sunday.

The above macro image shows a hover-fly on an Echinacea blossom. It’s taken by using a 105mm macro lens attached to a camera with an APS-C sized sensor in the early evening hours. Afterwards it’s developed from raw by using Luminar 2018.

Insects are very quickly moving animals. Additionally, their movements are nearly unpredictable. Even when sitting on blossoms for having a meal, they are constantly moving around. So, you have to use very short shutter-speeds when taking photographs beside a quick auto-focus. When using a macro lens for taking photos from small or tiny things like insects, you have to use a small aperture (= high number) to get images that are sharp for more than a tiny area. You know, the size of the field of depth depends on the focal length and the f-stop as well as the distance between your lens and the subject: the smaller the aperture, the bigger the field of depth and the longer the focal length the smaller the field of depth.

Both of these have an impact on the resulting image: a short shutter-speed only lets the light reach the sensor for a very short moment, while the small aperture limits the amount of light. So, what can we do to get properly exposed images? Right, we must increase the ISO, the sensitivity of the sensor. But, increasing the sensitivity also has a con: the digital noise in the image also increases and the fine structures might vanish. You might ask, why do I tell you all this technical stuff.

The reason is, nobody wants to look at noisy images with no structures. So, you have to use a software for developing your images, which is capable of eliminating the noise but preserves the structures.

In this image I still have all the structures: the fine hairs, the structures of the facet-eyes and the pollens. I also got rid of the noise from the background. So, Luminar did a great job again.

You can download a free demo (fully functional for 14 days) and test it on your own computer with you own images.

Take care!

(this post contains affiliate links)

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Monochrome Madness 4-43

 

 

This is my contribution to Monochrome Madness organized by Leanne Cole. Look at here site on Wednesday (Australian time), to see many more monochrome images created by many other talented photographers from all over the world.

I’d also encourage you to participate. The conditions are  published in each of her Monochrome Madness posts.

Take care!

Monochrome Madness 4-37

This week, I have more than one image for you. I’ve assembled a “Best of 2017 in monochrome” for you. Just like I’ve proposed last Thursday, when I showed my “Best of 2017” to you.

The images aren’t arranged in any particular order. Some of them were already published here in one of my weekly posts focussing on monochrome images. Others were unpublished until now.

Surprisingly, most of these images were taken in Zingst (8 out of the 10).

You know, I was twice in Zingst last year. In May I was attending the Umweltfotofestival and in October I was part of an bird excursion. The two images in the second row were my contribution to the festival exhibition and the right one, was acknowledged as one of the “Best of Festival” in the category “landscape”

 

This is my contribution to Monochrome Madness organized by Leanne Cole. Look at here site on Thursday (Australian time), to see many more monochrome images created by many other talented photographers from all over the world.

I’d also encourage you to participate. The conditions are  published in each of her Monochrome Madness posts.

Take care!

Daily Prompt: Green-Eyed Monster

Showing ‘green’, as “The Daily Post” asked for is quite easy for a nature photographer. Everywhere you can find green plants or even green animals.

Happy Saturday. Maybe you have some spare  time this weekend, to have a look at my other posts, too. Have fun.

red and cute

Aren’t all babies cute?

A few weeks ago I got the opportunity to take photos from fox babies. It was the second time, I got this chance, but this time the foxes were younger.

Those two little puppies were really cute. One of them very active, while the other one was quite tired. Look,

Pfffffffffttttttttt

spring flowers

It’s spring. And during spring you find many plants blooming. That’s also true for the Normandie. Some plants are blooming for weeks others only for days, and some of them are blooming only under certain circumstances like the wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa).