Backlit grasshopper

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Here is a macro shot from today, fully processed with PhotoFlow.

Taken with a Nikon D300 + micro-nikkor 60mm, naturally backlit by the setting sunlight - no flash or reflector used.

The processing in a nutshell:

  • ICC camera profile for “portrait” Nikon style used as the starting point
  • custom WB, slightly cooler than daylight preset
  • a slight S-shaped RGB curve to increase the contrast
  • bilateral-blur based local contrast enhancement + unsharp mask at 1,5 pixels radius
  • a bit of vignetting on the bottom-right corner
  • healing of some distracting elements and hot pixels
  • final cropping

The final result (CC-by-sa):

3858×2234 997 KB

What do you think?

Thanks for looking!

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Very nice! I like the antenna very much, the way they pull you back towards the subject.

The background may be a bit too dark for my taste.

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So delicate! I love the translucency and the sunlight shining through. I personally like the dark background so I focus my attention more on the grasshopper, but that’s just me. :slight_smile:

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Very nice, and I agree with Pat about the background. Personally, I would have liked a hair more DOF so that the ends of the antennae would be more in focus. All very subjective, of course.

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5

An excellently crafted shot, created by someone who knows their way around a camera.
You’ve even got a little catchlight in the eyes :slight_smile: :

The dark uncluttered background is essential to showcase the grasshoppers light green body.

The antennae being soft isn’t an issue as the DOF is so narrow when doing macros.

If I view large there is a bit of noise in the background, but then the image was never meant to be viewed large :slight_smile:

Cracking shot

Have a nice day, Phil

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@paperdigits @patdavid @elGordo @Phil_Howcroft

Thanks for looking!

I have another one with a brighter background, which I still need to process… will post it here later.

For this shot I intentionally kept the aperture quite large to get a fast shutter speed, because I was shooting hand-held and there was a bit of wind shaking the subject here and there… and I have learned the hard way that a bit of out-of-focus areas are much less disturbing than a whole image degraded by micro camera shake!

My D300 at 400ISO already shows some noise… that’s the disadvantage of the 10 years old technology. However, I think the noise was enhanced by the sharpening and local contrast, so I’ll try to apply them selectively and see what it gives.

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The noise isn’t an issue in the image. Just a little observation.

I have an old Canon 450D and that gets a little bit of noise in less than ideal conditions.

I have also read that RAW files tend to be quite noisy anyway (on here when I was having a whinge about noise)

Have a nice day

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Very good shot which demonstrates why I don’t like flash in macrophotography.

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Well, RAW files are not more noisy than in-camera Jpegs… I think that most of us tend to use less aggressive noise reduction on the processed RAW files than camera manufacturers do with SOOC Jpegs.

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Wonderfull shot and great PP!!!

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