Katydid

You probably imagine me about 12 inches from this little bug. In fact, I was probably not far off 10 feet away, as this was the closest I could get. This is by far the biggest katydid I have ever seen, a conservative estimate would be 2.5 inches in length, possibly more.

Not much more to say about katydids, except that what I normally see are juveniles or nymphs. As they reach the adult stages, they become more nocturnal, so this big daddy had settled down for the day but was quite in the open.

I had a disaster this morning. The first press of the shutter (flash up) just didn't feel right. Instead of a crisp 'klerik' it kinda went 'kerchunnnnnka'. A quick check of the settings revealed that the camera was selecting a shutter speed as though the flash was closed. I popped the flash up and down a few times to no avail.

I was now limited to shutter priority to get a decent speed and had no control over the aperture. In fact, I had more control over my Praktica MTL3. I am not allowed to tell you some of the new adjectives that I invented for the D7000!!!

I struggled through the session. Back at the lab, I quickly uploaded the images, picked up the manual and had a good read.

What had happened was that I must have popped up the flash at the same time as thumbing the ISO. This accidentally changed the flash setting to 'slow', which uses a non-flash shutter speed to give more exposure to the background while giving a flash lit foreground. Well, that was a relief. I have apologized to the camera for all the bad words that I used.

Dave