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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
Hi Folks , todays upload is of this baby grasshopper sitting on a flower having a little taste.
grass hoppers have a six stages of shedding to reach full maturity , in the first three stages they look much like this with little evidence of wings yet forming , in the fourth and fifth stage they will have small pointed appendages indicating their wings , and the last they have fully developed wings. these stages of development last about 25 days , around 4 days in each of the first 4 stages , and 7 days for the last two. their life span is around 50 days. these stages are described as first , second third .... instar stages till adulthood ,also known as imago.
I have seen the word imago also applied to butterflies , I think that it refers to any insect that has passed from nymphal stages to maturity.
I think that this tiny guy is a first or second instar , the differences in the first stages seem to be little more than size , I am not very good a estimating sizes but would say less than a centimeter.
when I saw this perched on the flower I of course though wow too cool an opertunity :-) , but it was quite back lit and I had to touch that up in software , I probably should have used the flash. using capture nx to convert the raw file I applied 5 color control points to the hopper and used them to bump the brightness of the insect. I then used photoshop elements to selectively reduce noise , very light on the insect and heavier on the background.
mostly the nikon d80 gives a good image with little noise , up till I make adjustments , increasing lightness flatters the noise so forces a noise reduction. I have experimented up to iso 1600 and am fairly happy with the images, but they look best if I do not make any color or lighting changes. I have yet to experiment with the settings for high iso noise reduction on the camera , presently I am using normal setting , when I do some low light photos I will try setting it to high to see the results there as well. high iso noise reduction only applies to iso 400 and up so there is no effect on this photo shot at 320.
thanks for stopping in , hope that you like it.
regards
Art |
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