August 28, 2009 – Tiny little cricket

1/320

f8

ISO 400

46mm

RAW

It had been raining today but had stopped by lunch time, so I set out to capture some closeups of water droplets on some flowers. As I was trying to do so, I luckily found this tiny cricket. Just how tiny is he? There are two good indicators -- look at the water droplet on the leaf above him and the tiny hairs on the left to the left. This little guy was less than a half-an-inch long.

Because of its close-focusing capabilities, I used my 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS lens to capture this photo. The sky was still overcast, so it provided nice, even lighting for the photo. If you read my post from yesterday, all of the settings are almost identical and it was for all the same reasons — except for the shutter speed. I could have dropped the film speed down to get a cleaner, smoother image and still have enough shutter speed for a sharp photo.

One thing I did specifically do for this photo is change my angle of view to isolate the cricket more against the darker patch in the background. My first shot had him against some of the green leaves, and he just didn't pop out much in the photo. I also cropped this shot so the cricket was placed in one of the corners of the photo, using the rule of thirds.

What do I wish I could have done differently? I could have done a better job putting him directly in front of the dark background, but I didn't have my tripod with me. I was holding the camera while leaning over some flowers, and it was hard to keep still. I am also starting to wish I had a legitimate macro lens, which would allow me for more zooming and closer photos.