Ranatra - Large to medium (body length 27-42mm, excluding 50mm long breathing siphon). This one was about 4 1/2 inches in length.

This image is a great improvement I think?? Thanks Ed!!


Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
The 350D is a nice camera but it and the 400D are almost the same, except the 400D has more pixels. I would opt for the 400D if you can swing it plus it has a larger preview screen, which you would appreciate after having used the smaller one on the 350D. By the way, get yourself some LCD protectors too. You know the little thin self adhesive plastic sheets. They do not harm your LCD screen and they offer protection against scratches and other things that may mar or harm your LCD display. They don't cost but a few dollars and worth every penny in the long run.To tell the truth, I don't know if I want the 400D, I think the 350D would suite me more??? I will see.....
Rik, I usually use a polarizer when I shoot flowers, if I can get away with it. Often, a polarizer used to cut glare from the highly reflective petals (and often leaves) has allowed me to increase the surface detail of my flowers, increase saturation and avoid the sheets of hotspot caused by glare. The use of cross polarized light sound fascinating. Thanks for the links.rjlittlefield wrote:These are interesting critters. Sounds like you found yourself a big one!
This shot is under water, I presume? Always challenging.
It looks like most of the image has glare from the surface. Often a polarizer will help reduce that, though it's rare that you can get rid of it entirely. If you can control the surroundings, it's very helpful to set up something big and dark for the water to reflect, while the light comes in from some other angle that will not reflect off the surface into the camera. If you can avoid shooting perpendicular to the water, then even on-camera flash may work well.
If you're really into hardcore technology solutions, there's a trick with polarizers on both the lens and the flash, crossed so as to almost completely kill direct reflections. I've only used that once or twice, but it got me a shot of some waterlice that would have been completely impossible otherwise. There's some discussion of that technique in the forum archives, here and here . Wil Hershberger used to have a good article posted at http://www.naturescapes.net/042004/wh0404.htm , but the whole naturescapes site seems to be offline right now.
I've never had much luck cleaning up glare in post-processing. It's tempting to think "oh, I'll just subtract that out", but the stuff is always so uneven that what works in one area is disastrous in another. Much better to avoid the glare in the first place.
Hope this is helpful. Shooting past that water surface is just tough!
--Rik
When I started doing some photography many years ago, I was told that "you must have this....you must have that" by other photographers, and so spent a fortune on things like filters, light meters, tripods etc. I discovered that most of this is completely unnecessary and ended up using none of the equipment I bought.Often, a polarizer used to cut glare from the highly reflective petals (and often leaves) has allowed me to increase the surface detail of my flowers, increase saturation and avoid the sheets of hotspot caused by glare.
No problem Irwin....it happens to all of us. Thanks for the lovely comment.Sorry for overlooking this post previously.