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Tips for Taking and Posting Pictures

posting pictures photobucket tips

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27 replies to this topic

#1 Offline Crystals - Posted October 11 2014 - 8:54 AM

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Tips for taking pictures

 

For ants that move around a lot, you can put a pebble in a pop bottle lid and make a water moat around the rock.  Some species have no problem jumping into the water, so this may not work for all species.

 

You can also take 2 pieces of glass and some clay to make a small "dungeon" for the ant.  The less space they have the easier time you will have getting a good picture.

 

For ants that live where it gets cool, you can put ants in the refrigerator for 5 minutes to slow them down for a shot.  Do not do this with tropical ants.

 

Good lighting can make all the difference. Try taking pictures just to see how different kinds of lighting affect the picture.  Sometimes pictures are better without the camera flash, but using other sources of light.  The best pictures I get are without the camera flash, but outside in natural lighting (not direct sunlight, but in light to medium shade).

 

If using any kind of additional lighting, keep in mind the glare from the lights and the angle of the camera to the glass.  A 15-45 degree angle tends to avoid the majority of the glare, but play around with your camera to see what works best.

 

 

Some simple things that can make a difference:

 

Get close to the ant so that if fills up at least half of your shot (if possible).

A macro lens or even a magnifying glass can help get close up pictures even with cheap cameras.

Clean your lens and the outside glass of the formicarium/test tube.

 

Once you have uploaded the picture to your computer, crop the image to make the ant more central and larger.

 

USB microscopes are also good for close up images.  Their price ranges from $25 and up.

 

 

Posting your pictures online

It is possible to upload a few lower quality pictures directly to this forum, but the majority of people upload their pictures to a third party free picture hosting site such as www.photobucket.com, www.flickr.com, or others.

1. Find an image host (eg: Imgur, Flickr, or other free 3rd party picture hosting sites), and upload your pictures.

2. Find the direct URL to the image file, which usually ends with an image file extension (eg: .jpg, .png, .gif). Some sites will specifically give you this URL, others you may have to obtain it yourself by pulling up the image in your browser and then copying the address.
3. Once you have the URL copied to your clipboard, while typing your post, you can either click the image icon near the center of the bottom toolbar of the graphical editor, and then paste that URL into the dialog box, or you can actually past it into an image tag like this:

[img=URL]


Edited by Crystals, December 28 2017 - 3:15 PM.

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#2 Offline Gregory2455 - Posted October 11 2014 - 11:34 AM

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I would highlight "Do not do this with tropical ants." we do not want someone from Brazil sticking their leaf cutter ant colony in the fridge. :(


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#3 Offline Alza - Posted October 11 2014 - 11:20 PM

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this is helpful 



#4 Offline James C. Trager - Posted October 12 2014 - 11:09 AM

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Brief chilling will not harm tropical ants. Freezing is not tolerated well, though. 


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#5 Offline Alza - Posted October 12 2014 - 11:19 AM

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how long would you consider brief ? two minutes ?



#6 Offline Gregory2455 - Posted October 12 2014 - 4:54 PM

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Well California's ants are not tropical, but I still would not suggest freezing them. As for time, I do not think time matters if you have a constant temperature of around 45 Fahrenheit.  :thinking:



#7 Offline Alza - Posted October 13 2014 - 8:50 PM

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Linepithema humile, solenopsis invicta, and so on. the invasive ones



#8 Offline Gregory2455 - Posted October 13 2014 - 9:02 PM

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Linepithema humile is capable of withstanding freezing conditions.



#9 Offline Alza - Posted October 13 2014 - 9:08 PM

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i havent seen them do it. 



#10 Offline Gregory2455 - Posted October 13 2014 - 9:22 PM

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Near freezing conditions. I imagine it is not as cold underground.



#11 Offline Foogoo - Posted April 24 2015 - 7:09 AM

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Can someone who knows photography explain the optimal settings for my Sony point and shoot? ISO, EV, WB... how do they factor in when taking pictures in the dark nest? What about in the field?


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#12 Offline Barristan - Posted April 24 2015 - 7:50 AM

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Just use a flash so you don't have to freeze the ants. Due to the flash you won't have any motion blur.

 

The problem with flash is that it will produce quite hard light. To make flash light softer use a softbox or an umbrella

 

 

This picture was taken using flash without a softbox:

 

h0u895gc3zym.jpg

 

This one with a soft box:

xi6q3t248p6e.jpg

(Crematogaster scutellaris)

 

The same problem with direct sunlight. Sunlight is great because it is really bright which is great for macro photography however direct sunlight is quite hard too.

 

Image taken during direct sunlight:

siam3bk4awq4.jpg

 

Using an umbrella to cast a shadow on the scene:

b590lqxk7clj.jpg

(Camponotus vagus)


Edited by Barristan, April 24 2015 - 7:52 AM.

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#13 Offline Wamdar - Posted April 24 2015 - 7:55 AM

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Nice shots!

 

Iso is sensor sensitivity, if you can control that, the highest you can select is good for low light but it makes the quality lower on your shots.

F stop controls your depth of field. The higher the number goes, the more light you're going to need.

Shutter speed will control your sharpness. 1/200 is your speed for a blurless shot, so if you have your camera set to Av which is usually the mode which pics your shutter speed, you can see if you're going to get a good shot..most of the time

 

its kinda like driving a stick shift, there is a sweet spot



#14 Offline Chromerust - Posted April 24 2015 - 3:58 PM

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One trick that has helped me with point and shoot cameras is to set it on the maximum resolution to get a huge image. Then take the pictures from at least 12" away. This does two things, the light disperses from the flash so you don't get that bright spot. Also it helps the camera focus. Then just crop the ant in the picture out and resize at about 1200 to reduce the file size. I want to say my camera is 14 megapixels. Try it, I bet it will help you a lot. You may need some photoshop skills. One easier way is use a online image editor like picmonkey or ribbet.
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#15 Offline dspdrew - Posted April 24 2015 - 4:37 PM

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I think that also helps avoid some of the distortion you get from crappier lenses.



#16 Offline Foogoo - Posted April 24 2015 - 10:23 PM

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That's why I hate camera phones and think they should work on improving that instead of offering other gimmicks with each new release. My phone is supposedly 13M yet zooming in yields a grainy picture you'd get from a 3M camera. I would use my point and shoot more often if it wasn't for Sony's stupid proprietary memory card.


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#17 Offline PTAntFan - Posted April 24 2015 - 10:45 PM

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I came across a nice freeware tool for Focus Stacking today.  It's called CombineZM.  I am pretty happy with it.  I used for two shots in my Ant ID post from Agua Dulce.


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#18 Offline BrittonLS - Posted May 31 2015 - 6:23 PM

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Can someone suggest a macro lens? If I could get a fairly decent one for cheap on my phone that I could take closeup ant pictures with that would be great, but I also have a Canon Eos Rebel t1i and so I might get a macro lens for that. But I'm not sure I want to spend +$100 for a lens, as great as taking pictures of ants would be. Especially since I don't have anything but test tubes to take pictures of yet lol



#19 Offline Roachant - Posted June 1 2015 - 9:18 AM

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You can try getting a raynox lens. They have a universal attachment kit and can take excellent shots. I got one for 75$. Che k samples online.

#20 Offline Leo - Posted September 25 2016 - 1:13 AM

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