My first grasshopper/cricket?

[Carl_Constantine]

I LOVE my family. They find a lot of things for me to take pictures of. One of my daughters, Emily, found this little guy outside our porch. She put a jar down and he hopped right in and brought to me to show. I was busy so I told her to put some grass in the Jar and I'll be right there.

I was concerned about him hopping away when my wife suggested the "fridge" trick to make him slow down. After reading some discussion on this forum about that in the past, I decided not to do that and just to risk it. Put him in our grass, lied down and snapped away. He was VERY cooperative. I took a bunch of pics, some of which I specifically tried to set up for helicon focus later. I'll try it out and post my result. In the mean time, here's my hopper in all his glory. This is about a 10% - 15% crop.



I know the lighting isn't the greatest. We had overcast skies and I don't have a macro flash or a remote flash. But hey, I'm happy as a hopper to get this pic.

Canon 300D | ISO 100 | 1/125s | F8 | 90mm Tamron AF Macro | Manual | Handheld

[puzzledpaul]

Sounds (and looks) like you're off to a good start in the world of hoppers - there's at least 2 other fans of these guys around the forums here

I've not tried 'cooling' either (and don't intend to) - probably because I enjoy the chase / challenge (especially as using a tripod) of trying to get a decent shot without resorting to such measures...

I know next to nothing about them, but find them fascinating to watch / observe.

I don't have HF, but can imagine that stacking hheld shots will also be something of a challenge - good luck

pp

[Ken Ramos]

It's a great image Carl, you did good. I either must have missed this thing on freezing bugs or I have just plain forgotten if I did read about it. Anyway I don't think that I will be giving it a try anytime soon. Thanks Carl.

[Carl_Constantine]

The funny things is, at one point while taking pics, I tried to move some grass out of the way. At which point it jumped and hit me in the nose. Landed, and stayed there while I took more shots. it was quite funny.

[puzzledpaul]

<< tried to move some grass out of the way ... >>

I use swiss army knife scissors for doing little bits of 'gardening' - and have also experienced similar 'close contact' during such operations - landed in my hair in my case

pp

[Wim van Egmond]

Well done! Indeed you don't have to freeze insects:-) But a cool morning after a hot day does work well!

The trick is to do all your movements very slowly because insects eyes are very good at detecting movements. macrophotography of insects is a bit like Tai Chi!

Wim