Spring is here
Apr, 2015Views
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Contest Finalist in Dancing Flowers Photo Contest
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jimfbauty
February 17, 2017
Great Capture. I have spent lots of time following bees around a similar type of apple tree. Saving for a better camera for higher shutter speeds and pixels to achieve the sharpness you display here.
pasdesigns
February 18, 2017
Thank you Jimfbauty! Well it may surprize you but this photo was taken with old manual lens Jupiter 11A + bellows on camera Canon 550D.
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in my village Bitelic, near town Sinj in Croatia where I love to go to relax and shoot pictures of nature from macro to landscapes.Time
It was beautiful spring day with lots of sunshine and photo was taken about 13h on 12th of April.Lighting
There was lot of natural light and I was shooting with old manual lens on bellows so I had to balance aperture, bellows size and shutter speed to have enough scene, depth of field and catch bee in flight, also iso was set at 100 to get the highest image quality (f8, 1/500). No additional light was used except sunshine.Equipment
Shot was taken with: Canon 550D + Jupiter 11A manual lens on bellows, hand held and holding breath :)Inspiration
I wanted to take photo representing Spring so I was trying to capture moment when bee is flying into flower. I photographed bees before but usually on flowers as it is difficult to catch them in flight and I wanted to make new, different photo so I gave myself a challenge. After lots of tries trying to find right setup and catch the right moment and scene I managed to get this shot and right on the camera screen I saw that was exactly shot I wanted with flowers and bee with big pollen load in focus.Editing
Photo was cropped, added little contrast and maybe minor adjustments of saturation.In my camera bag
About 6-7 months ago I switched from Canon 550D to Sony A7R - mainly because I use old manual lenses and they can all be adapted to mirrorless and of course better Dynamic Range and ISO. So beside A7R and few batteries I carry Sony FE 28-70mm and few manual lenses which I collect so lately I look to try different lens each time but some of my favorites are Helios 44-7 58/2, CZJ Flektogon 35/2.4, Jupiter 11A, CZJ Sonnar 135/3.5, Jupiter 21M 200/4... and some extension tubes or bellows.Feedback
Biggest problem in this shot was trying to find balance - to have enough depth of field I had to close down aperture and to catch bee in flight fast shutter speed is needed which both limit amount of light coming to sensor, you can compensate with higher ISO but on 550D noise starts early... So depending on your equipment - testing and adjusting till you find balance of what your equipment can do and what you want to achieve and then catching the right moment and scene. For shots like this it is important to think, setup and test before, as if DOF was smaller all important subjects would not be in focus, and if it was bigger image would be too dark and possibly something in background would be distracting. So setup first and then patience and little luck to catch the right moment of time.
