Meet my new friend.

greenfreak said:
Sounds like it's time for an upgrade. :)

Mine is a Tamron telephoto 75-300mm macro. Not too expensive, for a zoom/macro lens.
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Cam bought me a Tamron 70-300m for our 350D for my graduation. Got this one.
normal_cicada.jpg
 
greenfreak said:
The one thing I get all the time when people comment on my photos is "Wow, that's a nice picture. What camera do you use?" As if it's just all about the camera and anyone can take a good picture if they buy a $2000. camera.

It's a little annoying.
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I used to get that at BBY. People would return $1500+ cameras because it'd blur pictures. I gave up having to explain that it was basically a manual SLR and you had to actually work and learn to get the picture you wanted.
 
Goggle images shows that cicadas are all manner of sizes and colors. The buggy eyes and transparent wings are a seemingly dead giveaway.
 
I guess that Tamron lens is popular! Good quality for the money you pay.

That's purty cool Mirlyn. I'm guessing you used the macro for that? I'm currently playing with the depth of field and upping the F stop so that I can minimize the blurriness on the macros. The best way to do it is to put the camera parallel to the subject. But that doesn't make for a very interesting perspective.

I love cicadas. When I was a kid, I used to grab their unhatched brown little bodies and put them in a box I made with twigs and branches in it. Then I'd watch them hatch and come out of the shell, all soft and green. And it would take an hour or so for them to turn from that pretty green to black. Then I'd grab them by the back of their wings and throw them up in the air and set them free.

My parents thought my fascination with them wasn't healthy. We'd come in the house with the brown shells stuck all over our shirts, freak Mom out.

Ah youth. :D
 
greenfreak said:
The one thing I get all the time when people comment on my photos is "Wow, that's a nice picture. What camera do you use?" As if it's just all about the camera and anyone can take a good picture if they buy a $2000. camera.

It's a little annoying.
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I would ask that question, too, but not because I think that if I use the same camera as someone who takes great pictures uses, that I can take great pictures, too. I would ask that question because I have a very high level of interest in technical gadgetry.
 
Professur said:
Ok, Mir, now what the hell is that thing?
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Cicada indeed. About the size of a large thumb in length and girth. According to Cam, its not something of the same description you're used to. :D Much much louder. In season, they make outdoor conversation somewhat difficult.
greenfreak said:
I guess that Tamron lens is popular! Good quality for the money you pay.

That's purty cool Mirlyn. I'm guessing you used the macro for that? I'm currently playing with the depth of field and upping the F stop so that I can minimize the blurriness on the macros. The best way to do it is to put the camera parallel to the subject. But that doesn't make for a very interesting perspective.

I love cicadas. When I was a kid, I used to grab their unhatched brown little bodies and put them in a box I made with twigs and branches in it. Then I'd watch them hatch and come out of the shell, all soft and green. And it would take an hour or so for them to turn from that pretty green to black. Then I'd grab them by the back of their wings and throw them up in the air and set them free.

My parents thought my fascination with them wasn't healthy. We'd come in the house with the brown shells stuck all over our shirts, freak Mom out.

Ah youth. :D
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Indeed. I'll have to hunt down some other samples. I forgot all about the exoskeletons....used to find them all the time. :D Haven't around here though (where we moved) :confused:
 
Mirlyn said:
I used to get that at BBY. People would return $1500+ cameras because it'd blur pictures. I gave up having to explain that it was basically a manual SLR and you had to actually work and learn to get the picture you wanted.
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having worked in photo labs, i got a lot of people blaming me for their blurry picture.
them: "my picture's a little blurry. i demand to not pay for it."
me: "sorry, nothing i can do, we dont make the pictures blurry"
them: "well I didn't. i have a fancy camera, i paid thousands of dollars for it. i took photography in college 30 years ago. dont tell me about photography. there's no way i took a blurry picture"
me: "sorry, i can't do anything about it, sometimes people take blurry pictures."
 
As a side note, I think my digital camera has a problem, it is starting to take blurry pictures. :(
 
i dropped a film camera once, and all the pictures it took after that were blurry. i feel bad because i forgot to tell my parents and they took it on vacation. i feel so awful about that.
 
ash r said:
having worked in photo labs, i got a lot of people blaming me for their blurry picture.
them: "my picture's a little blurry. i demand to not pay for it."
me: "sorry, nothing i can do, we dont make the pictures blurry"
them: "well I didn't. i have a fancy camera, i paid thousands of dollars for it. i took photography in college 30 years ago. dont tell me about photography. there's no way i took a blurry picture"
me: "sorry, i can't do anything about it, sometimes people take blurry pictures."
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Show them the negative.
 
Inkara1 said:
Show them the negative.
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Doesn't matter to them. I used to love taking their camera/stereo/speakers/whatever and showing that it works just fine. :D
 
greenfreak said:
<snip>
I love cicadas. When I was a kid, I used to grab their unhatched brown little bodies and put them in a box I made with twigs and branches in it. Then I'd watch them hatch and come out of the shell, all soft and green. And it would take an hour or so for them to turn from that pretty green to black. Then I'd grab them by the back of their wings and throw them up in the air and set them free.

My parents thought my fascination with them wasn't healthy. We'd come in the house with the brown shells stuck all over our shirts, freak Mom out.

Ah youth. :D
Click to expand...
That's cool! I never thought about doing that - I'd love to see one hatch, that would be so neat.

A couple of them were clinging to the trunk of a potted palm on my porch recently, I guess they were in the soil and hatched. They were still green, then they were gone after a day or two.

When I was a kid we used to catch them and tie a thread to one of their legs and watch them fly around in a circle. :lloyd:

Oh yeah - I almost forgot what I came in here for:

Those jumping spiders have cousins in Africa who have a taste for human blood:

National Geographic article about vampire spiders

:eek:
 
That's fascinating. I love reading about stuff like that, you just don't realize how intelligent some animals/insects are. Those jumping spiders can get pretty big, my guy was just a little thing.

Cicadas have a pretty interesting background too with staying underground for 7 years, and how some "broods" coincide with each other and cause infestations. I remember a ton of them around as a kid, how you couldn't hear yourself talk sometimes with the noise they created. But at least on Long Island, that has waned over the years. I think last year there was supposed to be one of those seasons that were terrible and it really wasn't.

Mirlyn sounds like he got the worst of it. :D
 
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