Baby Mantids

Walter White

Reef Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
#1
The Butterfly Pavilion had me in today to shoot some of their baby mantids. They were pretty darn cute. So little less than 1/4" long. They had some other crazy mantis too they call black beauty. They were tough little buggers to get in focus. They would not sit still.





























 

TheRealChrisBrown

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ex-officio
#2
Ahhhh, great. More freaky nightmare bugs right before I go to sleep. Thank a lot Kris!

Just kidding, great pics on some fascinating creatures. I've never seen a mantis with a scorpion like tail like that! Crazy!
 

Walter White

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#5
J.guokas;n645783 said:
Amazing pics. What are you shooting with
The baby's were shot with a canon 100mm 1:1 f/2.8L on a 70D. The black one was shot with a Carl Zeiss 100mm 1:2 f/2.0 on a Canon 6D

I think they could have been much sharper for the gear I was using. Well at least the baby's anyway. I missed focus on most of those unfortunately. The black ones are really sharp you can zoom all the way into the compound detail of the eyes and wings on those at full resolution.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

SynDen

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#6
Dude that is awesome. The baby mantids are pretty cute. I love the 3rd shot, and Black beauty is amazing. That thing looks like a cross between a whip scorpion and a mantis with maybe some beetle mixed in. Crazy looking crawly. Love it
 

FinsUp

According to my watch, the time is now.
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#7
ok, those are cute. for bugs. they look like conductors.

Amazing photos! I'm using your advice to learn my camera better. Hopefully I get a bunch better soon.
 

Walter White

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M.A.S.C Club Member
#11
SynDen;n645857 said:
Dude that is awesome. The baby mantids are pretty cute. I love the 3rd shot, and Black beauty is amazing. That thing looks like a cross between a whip scorpion and a mantis with maybe some beetle mixed in. Crazy looking crawly. Love it
Yeah the 3rd one was my favorite out of these as well. I actually got a bunch that were pretty good about 25 or so but these were just the samples I sent back to the Butterfly Pavilion. I'm going to start doing regular shoots for them every month or so. They have way more stuff in the back in their lab area that you wouldn't expect them to have. Im saving up for a Cognysis stack shot computer and motor that should improve my extreme magnified images 10 fold both in sharpness and depth of field. I also need a different flash setup but thats a ways out still. I think they are going to have me shoot some really cool beetles in a couple weeks.

The new 100mm Zeiss is UNREAL, like on another planet unreal in sharpness and color rendering. Its not a true 1:1 but for larger subjects that don't require extreme magnification it blows the canon 100mm 2.8L right out of the water and the can is considered one of the best out there. The other really excellent thing about the Zeiss is it dosnt just have a really nice sweet spot between f/8-f/11 like the canon or 99% of the other lenses out there. It dosnt matter if you shoot full open at f/2.0 or f/22 it is razor shot all the way through and all the way to the extreme edges at ever aperture. Im am really excited about it and I think it is my favorite lens to date.
 
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