Some more breeding shots

[AfricanButterflies]

Hi all

This is the pupa that the weird Forest Queen larva produced:



This butterfly feeds on Dune Soapberry, a plant that hosts some of our most spectacular insects. Here's another that emerged today - a Peach Moth Egybollis vaillantina. A real exploded paintbox bug, and fiendishly difficult to light the incredible metallic blue wings!



Thanks for looking

Steve

[LordV]

Lovely shots Steve
Brian V.

[pturton]

Nicely done Steve.

[AfricanButterflies]

Let's try and get this thread going - here are some more breeding shots - this time the Common African Leopard Phalanta phalantha aethiopica. Livestock from my mate Kevin in Greytown. Here is the egg, a fully grown larva and two shots of the incredible pupa. Fingers crossed for some nice emergence shots later on!

Egg:


Fully grown larva (get those spines!)


And here is that pupa. The spots look like genuine silver-gilt, and the red is true 'candy-apple' - clear red pigment over a metallic background. The play of light on the metallic markings is gorgeous - here are two shots from slightly different angles (actually both are 9-image stacks):



Enjoy, and let's see everyone's breeding shots here!

All the best

Steve

[simonjoubert]

Steve, I have bred them too (P phalanta) and the pupa is awesome, jeweled much like E neophron. I want to post some Acraea larvae but am in two minds to stack them and try to get what you have or to do the portrait shot with a halo of spines blurring. That should read "I would like to stack them but am too nervious to post as I am still getting the hang of Combine ZP". The portraits work for me though.

Bye

S

[AfricanButterflies]

Originally Posted by simonjoubert

I want to post some Acraea larvae but am in two minds to stack them and try to get what you have or to do the portrait shot with a halo of spines blurring. That should read "I would like to stack them but am too nervious to post as I am still getting the hang of Combine ZP". The portraits work for me though.

Bye

S

Hi Simon

I was also nervous of halos so I tended to use a tiny aperture to get DOF for Acraea, and they also tend to move about a lot making stacking a pain. But this little Leopard sat very still. I use Combine ZP's Pyramoid Maximum Contrast macro - it takes longest but gives almost no halos. The best is Helicon Focus because you can adjust the extent and depth of the stack (on a pixel basis) and it aligns automatically - and works on Mac! Also you can see the stack building image by image. You generally find you can spot the one that misbehaves, go back and clone out the bad bits. But it's US$250 !

All the best

Steve