Thanks, Gerd!

Now I can imagine what's really going on the next time I end up feeding one of these things!

--Rik

I think polarized filters only remove glare/reflections from non-metallic objects. Yeah, you're right. I had forgotten that diffuse metallic surfaces preserve polarization of the illumination almost as well as shiny ones, so most likely you'll end up darkening all of the metal before you get the sh...

Appears to be Jewelweed or otherwise known as Yellow Touch-Me-Not. The color and general shape do resemble jewelweed, but details of the flowers and leaves seem wrong. I suspect that this flower is actually an introduced legume, perhaps something like birds-foot trefoil, see for example http://biol...

Have you tried semi-crossed polarizers -- one over the light, one over the lens? Sometimes that will let you get control over the specular reflections without messing up the overall sharpness. But it's been a long time since I played with them, and I really don't have much clue whether it's going to...

Superb job on a difficult subject! I have a love/hate relationship with tigers -- love to watch them, hate to photograph them! DOF and sharpness are perfect for this shot. Anything you're willing to tell us about equipment & settings? (Some people post these things routinely.) I checked out your web...

Any of you guys who knows what this critter is? Your picture is strikingly similar to the male Pimoa sheetweb weaver illustrated on page 49 of the Golden Guide "Spiders and their kin". Unfortunately I can't find a good image on the web to share. The large pedipalps and long skinny legs seem to go w...

It sounds like your insects are still a little damp. Before placing in closed storage, be sure they are completely dry. Putting a small package of dry silica gel in with them may help, if your environment is very humid. But even if the insects are completely dry, there is still a very real danger fr...

Superb picture! It's not annabella , though -- they have all orange bars on the leading edge of the front wing. The ones with white are Vanessa cardui , the Painted Lady or Cosmopolitan Butterfly. There is a huge population of these things this year. Pyle's "The Butterflies of Cascadia" summarizes t...

Min,

No need to permanently attach your dad's lens to your camera. Just figure out some way to get it centered, set it to minimum focal length (35mm), and treat it like a magnifying glass. It either works or not, and there's no good way to predict. Good luck!

--Rik

Beautiful image!

About the DOF: more light, stop down ... until diffraction messes you up. See http://www.photomacrography1.net/forum/ ... php?t=3150 and run some experiments to see how far you can push it.

--Rik

http://www.janrik.net/PanoPostings/20050822_macro/CRW_6730.jpg This little moth was sitting near one of the knurled nuts on my porch light. I like the interplay between the polished metal and the texture of the scales. Canon Digital Reflex Sigma 105mm macro at about 1:1 f/11 marked ISO 100 external...

Will, It's good to hear from you -- I have admired your micro work for some time and have looked forward to talking with you. You're right about the numbers, of course. But I had a very specific reason for quoting them the way I did, and also for presenting pictures without formulas. The audience I'...

mbaro, These are the ones that I know about. Step 0 is always to reduce the CA as much as possible by optical adjustments. You will get better results with less work. Step 1, download PTLens from http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/ . PTLens is a Photoshop plugin (for Windows only) with excellent capabili...

Hi all, I downloaded the full image. (Bit of difficulty with that -- what came down had some peculiarity such that neither Internet Explorer nor Photoshop could handle it. But IrfanView was OK with it, and after resaving I could pull it into Photoshop. Anyway...) It's clear from the full image that ...

Ken, Thinking more about your post, I realize there is one more technique that Insectia might have used -- the tilt lens. Very briefly, the trick is that the plane of focus does not have to be parallel to the plane of the image sensor. Rather, it can be tipped from a little to a lot, just by tilting...