Root Boring Weevil Portrait

abpho · Post by **abpho** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 5:50 am

I believe this is a Root Boring Weevil (Cyphocleonus achates).

Enjoy.

I am listing my notes from the shoot in case anyone wants to know.

*This is a slight crop of a 5:1 magnification stack using a Mitutoyo 5x M plan objective on a Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L tube lens with a 5D2 full frame camera. The 200L was used at f/2.8, focused to infinity.

*112 images at 20µm step size. The resulting depth of field is around 2.24mm.

*For the background I used a tan coloured rock which closely matched the weevil's body colouring.

*For the lighting I used a Canon 430EXII speedlite fired at the 12 o'clock position at 1/16 power (~1/5000sec effective shutter speed) through a styrofoam cup diffuser.

*ISO100.

*1/160sec shutter speed.

*Liveview (EFCS) after 2 second delay.

*Remote cable.

*Shot in RAW. Processed in ACR. Stacked into PMAX and DMAP images. Edited in Photoshop.

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Mon Jul 21, 2014 12:09 pm

Nicely done! These 'medium' snouted weevils always make me think of dogs..

abpho · Post by **abpho** » Mon Jul 21, 2014 4:40 pm

No long snout weevils in this area to report. Have not seen any in the 5 years I have been doing macro. Not full time mind you, but at least I am looking down when I walk.

There was one weevil. Very tiny. 2-3mm body length. It might have had a snout that could be considered long. But wayyyyy to tiny for me to bother photographing.

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 7:40 am

Beautiful... and not at all boring...

Yousef Alhabshi · Post by **Yousef Alhabshi** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 8:35 am

Interesting subject & over all the image looks so great.

BTW, I thought Canon cams wouldn't trigger the flash if the silent mode option is activated?

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:14 am

Yousef Alhabshi wrote:BTW, I thought Canon cams wouldn't trigger the flash if the silent mode option is activated?

If the camera realizes that a flash is mounted, it automatically drops out of live view just long enough to take the picture. This adds a lot of vibration, but then that's frozen out by the short effective exposure time.

--Rik

abpho · Post by **abpho** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:43 am

Yousef Alhabshi wrote:Interesting subject & over all the image looks so great.

Thanks.

Yousef Alhabshi wrote:BTW, I thought Canon cams wouldn't trigger the flash if the silent mode option is activated?

I have no idea. I guess I better do some research into the subject. How else would you do it? Using a constant light source? So, EFCS is only without the flash hooked up?