Stuart Ord
August 2019 - Beeiness
About the Image(s)
I guess macro means many things, but pictures of ugly bugs don’t attract me at all. Having said that, they are very good subjects as the unassisted eye doesn’t see them well, it’s just that I’m not a fan of creepy crawlies.
I was much impressed by the Charles Needle webinar I referred to last month. I spent an hour snapping flowers in our garden, many of which were being visited by bees and the like (these are not too creepy crawlie in my view, and I’ve got to say I like honey bees as I have four hives, trying to do my bit for the world-wide pollination problem). Anyway, three things I picked up from Charles were:
Using a long focal length lens can be a good approach
Doing “shoot through” shots to put a blurry frame round the subject can be nice
A small depth of field can be good. Not what most macro that I’ve seen seems to aim for, but why not?
As a results I’ve got lots of pictures I’d love to share here, but alas I’ve got to choose one. So here it is, what I’d consider to be a pictorial macro, if there’s such a thing.
There were dozens of white tailed bumble bees on what might be (I’m no expert) a veronica. This has lots of upright shoots with purple flowers which die off from the bottom. The bees were having a feast, so dozens of pictures were taken. Good ones were fewer, but that’s the beauty of digital, the cost is close to zero.
So I’ve now got a new favourite macro lens! Even at 400mm (800mm full frame equivalent) I was getting interesting shots.
Olympus OMD-E-M1ii, Panasonic 100mm-400mm lens at 100mm, f4, ISO 800, 1/3200 sec. (I’d had too many blurred ones!) with a 16mm extension tube, CWA, -0.3 stop compensation. Processed in Affinity photo, I reduced the clarity (the opposite of what I usually do, it had little effect on the bee and the flowers it is on but softened the rest) of the raw file, before converting to Photo Persona where I cropped, dodged the bee a little and vignetted the corners a little, sharpened and noise reduced. Next time ISO 400 or 200 perhaps, I should be able to hand hold better!
This round’s discussion is now closed!
14 comments posted
(Group 65)
(Groups 64 & 95)
Yes I did wonder about that crop as presently it is a second area of interest but I was chickening out of having so much out of focus if I did it. Charles Needle's photos are often more OOF than in focus, but I thought "walk before you run". If I just take off the right hand flower the bee becomes central, so here I've taken off a bit more to make it off centre again. Posted: 08/12/2019 01:24:57
(Group 65)
I tried a tighter crop and off balance NIK Color Efex pro 4 vignette filter.
This moves the image's category from Nature to Open with the changes I made.
Maybe you can come up with another crop or post processing effect. Posted: 08/12/2019 15:53:50
(Groups 64 & 95)
(Groups 64 & 95)
I like the 2 versions you came up with. Don't delete all of you other images without giving them a close examination. I actually prefer pictorial nature nowadays. When I first got into nature photography the subtle informing nature story was well regarded. Now it seems that the most obvious or violent action is preferred. Trends come and go. It is a real challenge to get close enough to get the shot you want. Nature does not wait for you!
Posted: 08/13/2019 05:33:07
I like very much the crop Janet made to your image, in case your subject was the bee. Your second and third bees were also beautiful.
I've found in Janet's crop version there is no distracting elements, the view can be fixed on the bee, exploring its work with the flower.
The third bee has an extra value because of we use to see bees from their back and this is a lateral view allowing to study head and legs. Posted: 08/16/2019 06:15:30
(Groups 0 & 53)
(Groups 64 & 95)
What a difference a crop makes!
Thanks for all your comments, it's so interesting to see other people's views.
As a matter of interest, how are you (all) getting the image to modify and re-submit? When I do it, I take the enlarged picture (click the main picture or zoom in) then screen print with a tool (I use Lightshot), paste into Affinity as a new file, then do whatever I want to do, export and upload that file. Is there a better way to do it? Posted: 08/21/2019 01:33:49
(Group 65)
I very much liked the cropped version from Dick while I also liked the full frame as posted by you.
One thing that caught my eye was the wider f stop to have shallow dof. it is superb and is giving a kind of feel to the viewer given the colors, blurriness.
I think SS of 1/1000 or 1/1600 would have still helped you to get a good sharp image which could have given you an edge to reduce ISO further. Overall, it is a fantastic image Posted: 08/22/2019 03:20:40
(Groups 64 & 95)