Hi Charlie: Very close in picture of this interesting and colorful ant, you must be close to 1X1 magnification. Composition wise I like the diagonal positioning of the ant on the leaf
In the past you have shared many insect pictures using your focus stacking method with razor sharp images produced. This single picture at f/9 does not have that same razor sharp definition as your stacked images, but interesting none the less.
Thanks for sharing.   Posted: 01/10/2025 13:49:43

Fascinating image of this ant against a textured leaf. Kudos for both seeing the scene and in your capture. Here the goal was the clan sharp capture of this critter. You accomplished this for the most part, but the legs tend to blur out a bit at the end. Also, there are some halos and odd discoloration (as seen in the greenish-gray area near the end of the bug) present. These can be addressed by making a good selection of the bug and darkening in the blurred areas some (with the selection active). Also, with the inverse of the selection active, one can clone away the blurred edges and clone away the light halos, thereby sharpening up the presentation. Now if this were a nature image submission, this might not be appropriate, but if a clean representation of this bug was the sole goal, this might be effective. I have created a version with these suggestions to illustrate my thoughts. See what you think …   Posted: 01/14/2025 17:20:58