The Tiny World

You are unlikely to see insects and creepy crawlies about at this time of year unless you search for them. Many can be found under logs or within leaf litter, and will range from the medium to the tiny in size. I tend to use my Olympus 38mm Macro F2.8 macro lens (aperture set to F11) to obtain a reasonable life size image, it starts at 3.5x magnification, increasing to 5x, when attached to the 65-116 telescopic auto extension tubes. This extreme macro magnification also requires flash lighting, and I use the T28 twin macro flash system with wide angle diffusers to provide the light source.

The Olympus OM-D EM-5 DSLR also requires some fine tuning to be able to use the older Olympus lens and flash equipment. I set the camera to shutter priority mode, and manually set the shutter speed set to a speed between 200 to 250. This enables the EVF viewfinder to be bright enough to see the subject and control the level of light being put down by the flash system.

Here is a selection of some of the insects, starting at the medium size descending to the tiny, found looking under logs and rooting through the leaf litter at Garston Wood and High Wood beside Badbury Rings,

A Centipede (Chilopoda)

A Small Spider

The really tiny insects are springtails, the Linears size range is approx 3-10mm, whilst the Globular’s are even smaller at approx 2mm’s.

Here is a Linear

Now the Globular’s

 

 

High Wood map

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Garston Wood map

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