The moon was nearly full when I camped at Wallaman Falls (previous post) and plenty bright enough for a moonlight ramble so I wondered if it might be bright enough for a moody photo of the falls. I knew it would be a technical challenge for a photographer with an entry-level DSLR and no tripod or remote shutter release, but I don’t mind a challenge and it was a good-enough excuse (if I needed one) for visiting the falls at night.
The shot above, straight from the camera except for a size reduction for online use (click on it for a larger version), was one of the better results. For the technically inclined, it was taken on a Canon EOS 600D, with a Canon 15-85mm zoom lens wide open at 15mm and f3.5, ISO 800 (higher ISO’s with this camera lead to unbearably noisy images) and an exposure time of 13 seconds. And no, it wasn’t really hand-held – I rested the camera on the lookout railing and held it very firmly as I pressed the button.
Winter sky from Ross River estuary, with Mount Elliot on the horizon
Friends and family have alerted recently me to two photography competitions which they thought I might like to enter. They were right, and the photo above is one of two that I’ve submitted to The Wild Beauty of Weather, the competition sponsored by ABC Science (the other is from the series of misty Magnetic Island views I took during the Wildlife Queensland walk around Many Peaks in May).
The other competition is more local: the Museum of Tropical Queensland’s Backyard Safari Photography Competition. It opened in June and doesn’t close until the end of October so there’s still plenty of time for everyone to enter. Entry is free (at is it for the ABC competition) and you don’t even have to win a prize to get a little kudos, since entries nominated by the judges will be exhibited during December 2014 and January 2015.
And I do encourage everyone to enter (although by doing so I must be reducing my chances of winning) because looking critically at our photographs to choose the best of them is valuable in developing our photographic skills. It can also be an excuse for an enjoyable ramble through the archives; most of the shots on my shortlist for the Backyard Safari have already appeared, as you might expect, on this blog, e.g. Percival, or on my Flickr photostream and looking through them has brought back many pleasant memories.
Oh, and the competition can be an excuse for a day-trip somewhere special to get that photo we’ve always dreamed of … too bad about weeding the lawn.
My spies alert me to some fascinating science and tech stuff on the web (thanks, guys!) and it’s time to share again.
1. Metronomes
If you put lots of metronomes on a table and start them at different times, they look for all the world as though they notice each other and gradually agree to line up so that their ticking is synchronised. Continue reading “Geeky fun: metronomes and extreme video”
As we get older, we forget what’s new and what’s not. In 1988, Amazing Inventions and Concoctions by Howard Elson (Octopus, UK) introduced ten-year-olds to quirky facts about old inventions and to the newest technology of the time. It makes thought-provoking reading today.
Media and communications technology
The default audio technology was gramophone records. Walkman cassette-tape players were cutting edge, replacing (according to the jokey illustration, at least) open-reel tape recorders. Continue reading “Amazing Inventions and Concoctions”
The TV antenna bug, more scientifically a Plant-hopper nymph, Eurybrachyidae, 2-3mm long
Over the last few months I have been exploring the limits of insect macrophotography, primarily by focusing (pun inevitable, I’m afraid) on the tiniest creatures I can find. I will present three collections under the ‘microfauna’ title; the other two will be spiders and flies, the two biggest groups of tiny invertebrates I have been looking at.
Just how big are they?
The biggest insects are moths the size of dinner plates – 300mm across.
The majority of insects that we notice are perhaps in the 5 – 50mm size range – ants and house flies up to hawk-moth caterpillars, dragonflies and biggish butterflies.
Everything on this page and its sequels is in the 1 – 5mm range, or smaller than a house fly. At life size they are roughly the size of a couple of letters of this text.
The smallest invertebrates to be found are smaller still (e.g. the smallest known adult spider is just 0.1mm long) but these are the smallest my camera can see clearly – and I will discuss the reasons for that sometime, too. Clicking on images will, as usual, take you to a larger version but the technical limits mean some are not very much larger.
Anyway, here is my tiny zoo. Its denizens are every bit as varied as their larger relations and some are quite bizarre. Most are unfamiliar because we don’t look properly at tiny bugs but just think ‘fly’, ‘ant’ or ‘dirt speck’ (and are, incidentally, more often wrong than right when we do so).
Plant-hopper nymph, Eurybrachyidae, side view showing the odd rear-mounted antennae more clearly.
These nymphs (juveniles) look nothing like the adults. They moult (see a cast-off skin here) and end up looking like one of these bugs … very strange.
Nymph of a plant-hopper, 2-3mm long.Nymph of a plant-hopper, 3-5mm longAdult hopper, Fulgoroidea, 3-5mm
There’s another of adult, of a different species in the same family, here. The two nymphs above probably belong to the same family. They look rather like cicadas but are much smaller and are not very closely related.
A tiny moth, 3-4mm long, hiding between the veins on the underside of a leaf.
This moth is probably from the Tineidae family, known as ‘clothes moths’ but eating a much more varied diet than that name suggests – see Wikipedia.
Wasp, possibly Braconidae, hanging under a leaf.Small wasp, perhaps Braconidae, on orchid leaf; the ovipositor (‘sting’) shows it is a female.
Both these wasps are about 5mm long, so they are among the bigger bugs on this page. Braconid wasps are parasites of other insects. There are 15,000 or more species so identification is quite a task.
Black weevil, Curculionidae, 2mmBrown weevil, Curculionidae, 3mm
Weevils are beetles (Coleoptera) but have strange trunk-like snouts. Some members of the family grow to 15mm or more but the ones in my garden are tiny. There’s a whole page about Aussie weevils on OzAnimals.com.
Orange ladybird, Coccinellidae, on hibiscus bud
I will finish this page with a ladybird because it’s such a monster … compared to the other insects in the picture. Can you see two tiny pale greenish critters down inside the base of the bud? Now they are tiny!
