To bee or not to bee
Caught this Blue Banded Bee in the back yard while trying my hand at some Marco shots.
Caught this Blue Banded Bee in the back yard while trying my hand at some Marco shots.
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Oct, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in my back yard, on our farm near Townsville in North Queensland, Australia.Time
This was taken about 3pm in the afternoon after a trip into town where I made a spontaneous purchase of a cheap macro lens just to have a go a some macro shots. After getting home, I went straight to the back yard to see what it could do and found this little guy in the bottle brush tree.Lighting
I was really lucky with the lighting. It was a beautiful day with the sun light softing in the afternoon lighting up the subject perfectly.Equipment
This was shot with a Nikon D7200 and a Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 DG Macro lens. Shot hand held. I am pleasantly surprised by this lens although it is a very cheap lens it still has delivered some really nice shots like this one.Inspiration
I am very much an amateur enthusiast when it come to photography. I was keen to try my hand at macro photography and after purchasing a macro lens headed straight to the back yard with the intention to try shooting some of the flowering plants in our garden when this little guy flew into the scene. So I turned the shutter speed up and fired away on manual focus.Editing
After taking this shot hand held I had to do some some minor processing in Lightroom including cropping in on the subject to fill the frame and giving a boost to the colour vibrance and saturation to really bring out the colours in the photo.In my camera bag
I have just recently upgraded from the Nikon D90 to the D7200. It is a fantastic camera and I am especially impressed with how it performs in low light conditions. My Tamron SP 24-70mm F2.8 lens stays on the camera most of the time. It is a very good fast lens perfect for my family photos and capturing indoor sports action shots which are often under difficult lighting conditions. The next go to lens is the Tamron SP 10-24mm F3.5-4.5 great for those family shots where you need to get everybody in the frame without telling them to squeeze together like sardines. It also produces some nice landscape shots and although not the best lens for astrophotography it still has taken some nice Milky Way shots that I'm happy with. The AF-S Nikkor 50mm F1.4 prime lens, perfect for portraits. Finally the Sigma 70-300mm a nice fun lens to try out some macro and to give me some extra reach when trying to capture some shots of the wildlife out on the farm. That is until I can afford a nice 150-600mm lens. Who knows, maybe I might win one in a view bug competition. ;)Feedback
When capturing something as fast moving and small as a bee you need to keep your camera on manual focus. Use the nearby object such as the flower to get your shot in focus then have a lot of patience and hope for a bit of luck as you wait for the little guy to pass into the field of focus. They can be very difficult models to work with and don't always line themselves for the perfect shot so increase your depth of field to improve your chances of getting all of the subject in focus (f 8-11). You will need a fast shutter speed and use a high speed burst shot too because these guys are fast! I used 1/1600 here to still get some motion blur on the wings to capture the feeling of how hard these guys are working just to stay in the air. Because of these settings you will need some good lighting. So unless you have a ring flash for macro shots, wait for a nice sunny morning or afternoon and head out to your back garden or down to the local park and give it a go.
