Jody,

These last three images continue to show your high standards and quality of work. I especially like this ant and aphids. The clarity and composition are superb!

--Rik

Thomas, Thanks for the additional info. Now I understand better. I agree completely about DivX. New and better video compressors seem to come out every year or so. There's no reason to think that this year and next will both be exceptions. Maybe you would be happy thinking in terms of "master" and "...

Thomas, I looked at all your movies. The sharpness seems OK to me, but the movies are pretty dark and I think this is degrading the detail that I can see. I paused several places, pulled still frames into Photoshop, and discovered that they were using only about 1/2 of the brightness range. For exam...

If you are using some older, 3rd party lenses (especially Sigma lenses) you will get ERR99 messages unless Sigma is willing to update the chip in the lens. Tom, have you heard or seen that these chip-caused ERR99's are ever intermittent? I've never encountered a chip-caused problem, and I've casual...

Yep, strictly a taste thing. What really caught my attention was that one fuzzy little cloud(?) on the bottom edge of the first image. I dunno why, but that thing just keeps sucking my eyes off the dragonfly, despite how crisp and lusciously colored it is . The third image, they're riveted on the bu...

Tom, these are awesome!

Now if you could just manage to get (or make?) the backgrounds on the first two as clean as the last one, they'd be completely unbeatable -- exhibition prints for sure.

--Rik

Steffen, Study http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/bokeh.shtml . It has quite a bit of discussion of aperture shape, including some 'sink-strainer' apertures consisting of many small holes. It also discusses and illustrates that there is a lot more to bokeh than the shape of the aperture. You a...

Wim, sorry about that. I didn't think about wmv's not being readable by Mac's.

Try this DivX-encoded .avi instead. If you don't have the DivX codec, it's a free download at http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/.

Let me know what happens, please. I don't have a Mac handy to test with.

--Rik

Mike, thanks! Not to worry, I was just joking about "last". But it may be a while -- it's hard to squeeze this stuff in around work and chores. Wim, hi! I figured you were off doing other things for a while but would be back eventually. I saw your page a few weeks ago. Lovely photomicrographs! Did y...

Possibly relevant info... I have encountered problems with line-frequency flicker. Especially with fluorescent lighting, there's a periodic cycling of brightness & color balance as the line power drifts in and out of sync with the video frames. However, I recently purchased a midrange fiber optic il...

Lovely! It took me a while to notice the bud, but that sure caught my attention in the last few seconds.

A quick technical question: what video editing tool did you use? I'm especially interested in the scale bar overlay.

Thanks,
--Rik

Charlie, thanks for the compliment. Being able to produce images like this is a real treat, and I owe a lot of it to cribbing off your techniques. Thanks for sharing! Ken, have it at -- there's no magic, just a lot of mistakes under the bridge. The mantra here is KISS -- Keep It Stable, STABLE! I do...

Edwin, are these shot with that big fluffy diffuser you showed us a while back? I'm starting to think there's something magic about diffuse illumination. Rene explained to us some time back that high NA in a microscope condenser could essentially double the resolution. I wonder if something similar ...

I'm jealous -- you're having way too much fun with this stuff, and cranking out really nice pictures to boot :D Yep, more little aphids, being squirted out before our very eyes. Did you know these are all female? During the summer, aphids reproduce by parthenogenesis -- no mating, just females produ...

Inch Worm :?: Yep. One of the geometrid moths, Lepidoptera:Geometridae . A lot of them hide by looking like twigs. There's a really weird inchworm, native to Hawaii, that eats other insects instead of plants. It sits around looking like a twig, until something touches its posterior. Then it snaps a...