Finally - the hoppers made an appearance

salden · Post by **salden** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 4:06 pm

Seems like they took the scenic route getting to my garden. I did not think they would ever show themselves.

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:25 pm

Well Sue, I am not sure if you should be happy they arrived in your garden being that they have a large Appetite. I like the way everything is arranged in the photo.

salden · Post by **salden** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:27 pm

beetleman wrote:Well Sue, I am not sure if you should be happy they arrived in your garden being that they have a large Appetite. I like the way everything is arranged in the photo.

Maybe, but my garden is there to attact the insects and I do not care if they have a bite of lunch once in a while.

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 7:03 pm

Your hopper ain't smiling.

Pass him the mayo if its having lunch at your place, that shoud make it smile. Speaking of having lunch at your place, how about the rest of us. We are hungry too!

salden · Post by **salden** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:44 am

He is too smiling Ken. See that little gleam in his eye. He is a baby anyway and you how babies are when it comes to putting on the grin...

As for lunch - I have peppers, onions, tomatoes, watermelon, potatoes..etc planted around the garden. They are mostly to feed the wildlife that come around, but you are more than welcome to bring a blanket, sit in the yard and munch down as much as you like. Bring your own Mayo...

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 3:42 am

Ya know back when I was a kid, well still am but we won't get into that, I used to go to the garden all of the time for a snack. I would eat tomatoes off the vine, and corn right off the stalk, there were melons too among the other things we had growing around the house such as apples, peaches, plums and grapes. I enjoyed a pretty health diet back then. Now its Big Macs and greasy Chinese food.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:52 am

Sue, I really like the composition of this shot -- especially the way the subject and nearby leaves are crisp, but they're all surrounded by OOF fuzzy stuff. Reminds me of those baby pictures taken with special fuzzy-around-the-edges lenses or filters.

Hhmm...that makes me wonder...would it help to fuzz the very border of that leaf at the right-hand margin, just to complete the effect?

One interesting thing... I've looked at this shot on two monitors now. The one at work, I keep pushed farther back ('cuz I have two of them, side by side). There, the picture just looks very crisp. The one at home I keep closer, and the picture looks oversharpened. (I'm at home right now, and I'm struck by little halos around all the bright stuff.)

Anyway, nice picture -- and I like the concept of somebody who keeps a garden for the bugs to eat!

--Rik

salden · Post by **salden** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:59 am

Hey Rik

Not sure about the halos as I did not apply sharpening to this image at all. It did not appear to need it. I am on my work computer now (yep, two screens) and it looks the same as on my home monitor...no halos.

Walter Piorkowski · Post by **Walter Piorkowski** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 10:53 am

The eye looks very intersting Sue. Is there really a black spot in it or is it a shadow of the white spot I also see there.
Walt

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:06 am

salden wrote:Not sure about the halos as I did not apply sharpening to this image at all. It did not appear to need it. I am on my work computer now (yep, two screens) and it looks the same as on my home monitor...no halos.

Interesting. Copy the image from your browser, paste it into Photoshop, display it at 400%, and take a look at the bright hairs on the face and feet, or any of the other bright spots, for that matter.

Does your camera perchance have options for in-camera sharpening? (Mine does.)

--Rik

salden · Post by **salden** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:16 am

rjlittlefield wrote:
salden wrote:Not sure about the halos as I did not apply sharpening to this image at all. It did not appear to need it. I am on my work computer now (yep, two screens) and it looks the same as on my home monitor...no halos.
Interesting. Copy the image from your browser, paste it into Photoshop, display it at 400%, and take a look at the bright hairs on the face and feet, or any of the other bright spots, for that matter.

Does your camera perchance have options for in-camera sharpening? (Mine does.)

--Rik

Yes it does. I thought I had shut that off, but who knows..I will check it when I get home.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:17 am

Walter Piorkowski wrote:The eye looks very intersting Sue. Is there really a black spot in it or is it a shadow of the white spot I also see there.
Walt

Walt,

The slightly fuzzy oval-shaped black spot aligned on the 2 o'clock / 8 o'clock axis looks real. I'm pretty sure that spot represents the ommatidia that happen to be pointed at the camera, so that we're looking down into them to see their light-absorbing structures. Essentially, we're seeing as black the ommatidia that are seeing us. If you were looking at the real hopper, that spot would probably follow you around. Many insect eyes act like this. A lot of philosophical nonsense has been written about what is essentially just an optical effect.

--Rik

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:37 am

If you are shooting RAW I think some RAW converters like I use in Elements 4 (Adobe Camera RAW) have some automatic sharpening and image corrections in order to show a reasonable image to start with unless you switch them off.

They also have "auto" correction boxes you can click to turn the auto settings on or just move the sliders below to turn them off. I wonder therefore even if you did turn off sharpening in camera your processing software applied some automatically?

DaveW

salden · Post by **salden** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:30 pm

You got it Dave. I checked my raw processor and yep it was there and the slider was moved to the right more than I think it should be. In any case I have completed turned that off. I never noticed it since I never looked at the sharpening, since I had to desire to sharpen the image during raw processing.

Thanks guys.

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 3:04 pm

Sharpening has become even more of a feature of the latest Adobe Camera RAW 4.1 plug-in for Photoshop CS3 and Elements 5. It is said to be far the best RAW Converter Adobe has yet produced. Alas you cannot use it with older Photoshop or Elements versions. See:-

http://photoshopnews.com/2007/05/31/abo ... ra-raw-41/

Regarding sharpening in Adobe Camera Raw. Scott Kelby's book says to switch it off altogether you have to set the slider to 0% then go to Camera Raw's flyout menu (it's to the right of the Settings pop-up menu) and choose "Save New Camera Raw Defaults" otherwise you will only turn it off for that one picture and next time you use it default sharpening will be applied again. That is also the case with all the other sliders if you do not wish them to apply some auto correction.

As you will see from the link above after previously recommending sharpening should only be done as the last stage before saving, opinion now seems to be moving to recommending sharpening in several stages, with some initial sharpening in the raw converter and some more just before saving.

DaveW