Mantis laying egg pod
 

I shot this with the Canon XL-1s w/stock 16x, 1.6 teleconverter and a 2x diopter. It took her 40 minutes to complete it. Later in the year I videoed the little darlings hatching out. Bob

Bob, as your last footage this was excellent too. Nice edited.
I just wonder about the colors, in your last footage the mantis was green, now it was brownish, did you use any extra lightsource?

Keep up your good work Bob.

Nature provides them in both colors. They tend to blend in with their surroundings. Notice the first mantis was green and it was standing on a leaf. The mantis in this video was on a twig and so was brown.

It can also be a male/female thing. In nature, as you probably know, the males tend to be brighter and more vivid while the females look rather drab. Somewhat opposite to the human race! (grin)

-gb-

Greg, thank you for enlighten me :-)
Mother nature is incredible!

Once again! Great job, Bob! I assume that this one is natural lighting also?

Where do you go to shoot this kind of video? I would sure like to try it some time.

That it is Per!

Thanks.

~Gabriel~

Gabriel, thank you and the others for the compliments. In this case I videoed the first one in my back yard in the heart of Atlanta. Later I found a gravid (pregnant) female. I put her in a breeding case and fed her crickets and a moisture solution called "Cricket Quencher" as a water supply. This is the one laying the eggs. I used natural light from windows. I "released" her and all the egg pods in the spring, except for the two that I videoed hatching (I also released all baby mantids). I used the Canon-XL1s as a "cam" but used firewire to connect to my Panasonic deck and did actual recorded on that deck hooked to a monitor. I really believe that you can find all sorts of "wildlife" in your yard, or even local parks. Some of the close ups I did in the Atlanta botanical gardens are some of my favorite shots. Like the man said, just go out and shoot. Bob

Thanks for all the info! But I do have one more question to ask... What panasonic camera did you use?

~Gabriel~

No,No. I used my Canon XL-1s hooked to a Panasonic DV2000 deck via firewire. The Canon "captures" the shot, but I do the actual "recording" on the deck. I do this often when videoing in my studio so as not to put extra usage in the Canon-XL1s' heads. I also check critical focus on my external monitor. Bob

Yeah thats what I meant! Sorry I did not explain that clearly... Thanks tho! Thats what I wanted to know. I was looking into buying a panasonic so I was wondering what model you had to do the recording on. and if I can ask one more... Have you ever tried using the panasonic my it self? If do, how was the picture quality? Thanks again!

~Gabriel~

During the Spring, I found a grassy field near the top of a hill, that had uncountable thousands of mantises. They were all bright green, as was the grass. Now that the grass has dried and is brown, the mantises have adopted
the same color. At both times, their camouflage made them invisible, unless you looked closely. It wasn't easy to get good pictures, unless I slipped something of a different color behind them. I'm puzzled why this concentration of them hasn't attracted predators, such as birds. I wonder if they have some toxic chemistry that makes them unpalatable?

Gabriel, tha Panasonic is a deck only, not a camcorder. Just a recorder/playbcak deck. It really cuts out head wear on the Canon by recording directly to the Panasonic deck.

I was in Moscow, Idaho back in 1980 and a friend and I came across a massive brood of Ladybugs. Millions of them, they were sometimes 8 - 10 inches thick on the ground and in some cases actually bent branches on pine trees. Never saw anything like it. And, neither of us had a camera. Nature is such a wonder. Bob