ITAP of this little guy miles from a Pennsylvania trailhead (full resolution). I've never been more proud of a macro shot
Posted Jul 23, 2011, 1:59 AM UTC
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I've held salamanders in my hand that looked less life-like than this.
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I was afraid to touch him, he was so awesome. He was sooooo tiny I thought I would accidentally hurt him if I moved him.
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Looks like an Eastern newt. If all goes right for one, it can live a good while.
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Beautiful! The colors are so vivid and crisp.
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Awesome colors! Very nicely done
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good job it's awesome!
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Excellent shot!
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That is a good shot. If the shadows had even half the detail the salamander has this would be amazing.
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I'd be damn proud of this shot too. Nicely done! Love the lighting, and how it gives a sense of the subject's perspective. The salamander is gorgeous too.
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Lighting was tough. I had a speedlight on a cord on the ground facing him and I had to move it around a lot to get the exposure right and get it diffused like this. Which is hard when you're trying to hold a camera back and forth above it keeping the focus.
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It was very kind of him to stay there while you got it all set up. It's a beautiful photo.
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Awesome shot.
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Very nice photo man, the colors blend so well. So vivid!
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Excellent shot!!!!
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That's an awesome shot. The deep shadows really make it. Also nice job with the focus- I only noticed the fuzzy leaf in the foreground on third viewing.
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you should be proud! this is amazing!
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Amazing shot. Found a new desktop background :D
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good shot tell us about the settings, lens, body etc...
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Imgur screws up colour profiles too. My shots look noticeably colder after uploading there, even in Firefox. It's fine for rage comics and meme pictures, but I couldn't recommend them for photography.
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They recompress, strip colour profiles from, and strip EXIF from images smaller than 2 MB too, smaller than 1 MB even.
Example:
374KB original
135KB on Imgur
A noticeable loss of quality, colour, and EXIF data, when the image filesize was small (for 1600x1200) to begin with.
Note that if you're viewing these images in Chrome, they'll look identical. It can't handle colour profiles properly either.
No problem!
I used a Nikon D3 set to ISO 1600 (so I could stop down the aperture a bit more) and set a SB-900 speedlight on a sync cord to 1/32nd of full power set on the ground with a diffusion dome on pointing towards the salamander and set the shutter speed to 1/160th.
I used a circa 1970ish (Nippon Kogaku serial #6052**, so I think either 1969 or 1970) Nikkor-Micro 55mm lens with an extension tube and turned the aperture ring to f/16.
I took about 40 shots to get this one.
Edit: And as requested, I uploaded the photo to flickr as well so the EXIF would be intact.
wow, that's truly amazing planning. I am one of those photographers that just goes out with his camera and gets lucky. To have this level of technical knowledge is something I'm going to have to work towards..