Yellowjacket Head study

[beetleman]

Subfamily Vespinae - Hornets and Yellowjackets.
My wife wacked this Yellowjacket with a magazine because it was in the house so I said to myself "lets do a stack" I had to spend a lot of time in post processing getting rid of dust particles and small fibers. I did blow her off with canned air but there was still some small particles showing up in the final picture. I need to get a small fine paint brush for cleaning eyes and such. The second photo is focused as close as I can get with my lens setup. Both are full frame. Any idea on my maximum magnification? I`m guessing the width of the head is 1.5 to 1.8mm wide.

ISO100, F/10, 1.3 sec, 400D, 68mm of Kinko tubes, Canon 100mm macro & reversed 50mm. Stack of 87 shots with HF.


ISO100, F/8, 4 sec, 400D, 68mm of Kinko tubes, Canon 100mm macro & reversed 50mm. Stack of 74 shots with HF.

[rjlittlefield]

Nice images, Doug. Good color and contrast, and the lighting works well.

Any idea on my maximum magnification? I`m guessing the width of the head is 1.5 to 1.8mm wide.

"Magnification" is always a bit of a trap, but...

If the critter's head is 1.5 to 1.8 mm wide, then your second shot has a field width of 1.5 to 1.8 mm, call it 1.7 mm. Your 400D has a sensor that is 22.2 mm wide, so your magnification at the sensor would be about 22.2/1.7 = 13X. On my monitor, the image measures 210 mm wide, so that would be 210/1.7 = 120X. And finally, the amount of detail visible in the image is maybe what you'd get through a 50X microscope.

So it's kind of like the punch line from that old joke about the accountant, "What would you like the answer to be?".

--Rik

[lauriek]

Nice shots Doug!

I would have thought though, that unless your wasps in the US are puny compared to ours in the UK (and this looks like a similar species to one we have here, the facial markings are identical to vespula germanica [sp?]) - I would estimate the head is more like 3-4mm across, meaning your magnification is more like 5-7:1. Which is quite a lot of magnification really! As I'm sure you've noticed it's virtually impossible to shoot high quality pictures at this level of magnification without stacking.

I must admit I'm slightly confused now, I just looked up the german wasp on Wikipedia, and it reckons they are 13mm or 1/2 inch long. Not in my experience! I've found several of these and none were anything like as small as 1/2 inch!! Perhaps we have giant wasps round here, in which case Doug's size estimate could well be more accurate than my guess, as he does have the specimen in front of him!!

[Aynia]

First pic is really nice. And it certainly reminds me of our wasps. However I don't pay that much attention to the detail... as my eyes just aren't that good! I normally catch mine in a glass and let them out.

Can't comment on stacking though.

[Michigan Michael]

VERY nice photos, Doug.

[Charles Krebs]

Nice jog Doug.

This is the type of subject can can pose stacking problems... a couple of big antenna crossing the face and lots of hairs. Do you see any resolution difference between f8 and the smaller stops you used once before?

[beetleman]

Thank you everyone for the great comments.

RIK:
Thank you very much for the "one size fits all math answer" once you explained it , I see why it all depends on what and how you are looking at it.
LAURIE:
You are right on the width of the head being 3-4mm. When I went home and got my mm ruler out, that is what I came up with. The body length is around 14mm. I have seen bigger and smaller than this specimen.

CHARLES:
I tried stacking this subject 5 times and this was the best out of the 5. It seems like the angle of the shot had a lot to do with stacking problems. More of a side angle went through more hairs and created lots of hair artifacts. Right now, I am still working on my lighting and getting everything stable so I have not tried to mess around with different stops.

[rjlittlefield]

RIK:
Thank you very much for the "one size fits all math answer" once you explained it , I see why it all depends on what and how you are looking at it.
LAURIE:
You are right on the width of the head being 3-4mm. When I went home and got my mm ruler out, that is what I came up with.

Doug, you're very welcome.

Except now I guess we need go to back and drop all my calculations by a factor of 2, to compensate for the new measured size of the subject. (I was kinda wondering about the large magnifications, but I figured, "Hey, he's the man with the bug!"

--Rik

[spidermanbryce2006]

Brilliant shots!