Quake3World

No I do not use the ring flash for all my macros. In fact, these last shots were straight off the flash on camera..... I had gone outside to get a shot or two for a Competition and was looking to just do natural light only to find my settings a bit on the dark side, but I did not want to pull away and run inside and mount it. nor did I want to up my ISO speed and risk to much noise. Sometimes you just get lucky and go with it. (I did not enter the Comp yet as it was for Natural Light and instead chose to share them here.)

1:1 would be your, or my macro focused, with subject in frame and as close as you can get with out losing focus. 1:2 would be pulled back some and in focus and on back to 1:3, 1:4 going farther away, or less magnification.

There in lies a problem. Say you have a creature in focus and you go to get a little bit closer, even tho you have your camera set to AI Servo, it keeps focusing back and forth, this is the time to go to manual focus and like a gun, zoom in, get the focus and take the shot. I use AI servo till I'm as close as it will let me then switch to manual and move in as close as I can and breath deep, hold, depending on wind, click.

Macro goes from 1:1, 2:1 3:1 ect to as close as one can get, for higher magnification.

A result from an MPE-65 at 5:1 of a damsel fly.....
(not mine)



It is here I will also say, your last shots of the Hover fly, while not fully in focus were damn good for a second showing of your attempts. It is indeed not easy to capture a Hover fly in flight. So my hats off to you for getting one.

If people only realized how small that bastard was they would appreciate the photo more.

Yea, with the focus issue - I know the one in flight isn't in the best focus. For the other ones, is there a trick besides focus stacking to getting the whole bug in focus? It seems like I have to just choose whether I want the eyes, thorax, or abdomen to be sharp because of how narrow the plane of focus is. Is it just a matter of using a narrower aperture?

You will never get a whole bug in focus if you are looking from its face to its back. The only time you can get a full bug focus is from the side or top, or be back far enough to not let it fill the frame and then crop, ie 1:2, 1:3. At 1:1 or less, don't look for that to happen.

I never used a 100 mm macro but I would be willing to bet that if you used f/9 to f/11 you would see kinder results. And yes the DOF is still narrow however the camera will take in a little bit more of that field.

Unless you plan to focus stack, always go for the eye, as an out of focus eye really means a lost shot. If you get the eye in focus, then you have most of the face in focus to, increasing your keeper rate so to say.Of course focusing on a hover fly's eye in flight is not likely ever going to happen, and a smaller aperture gives you more room, but not much. I have yet to get an insect in flight in focus. It's just luck that some do, or they are shooting at 1:2 or up and then cropping.

Personally I see nothing wrong with cropping as long as the result is good. No need to keep extra data in a photo if it really does nothing for it.

ucking ell those r awesome

My gf's niece

why so serious?

Again, my camera sucks:

lol wtf

hehe that wicked chupy!

and on a side note thats neat that both orms and my baby grasshoppers are constructed so so so same yet so so far away from eachother

yea the color squeeme is a varient but the design and construction reveal alot of intersting question

to me anyways

the gundam is life-sized and was built for (i think) the 30th anniversary of the gundam series.

Another HDR:

Nice job on the HDR tnf.


A Young female Robber Fly.





Eggs on a leaf. The left one is ruptured due to rubbing.. It will not hatch.

Typical Dutch Windmill. I discovered it while running. It's a bit hidden in a park, not so far from my house.

tnf wrote:Tried some bug macros this afternoon while visiting my parents (tons of flowers so lots of pollinators)

Only had the pop up flash available and these haven't had any work done except for one shot that I desaturated a bit.

I love this one

a couple of random shots from the botanic gardens





yeah, spot the lightroom filter

Another hoverfly in flight shot.

nice

there's some really great stuff in this thread

A Blue Bottle Fly




One of my favorite fly's to try to capture.... A Hover Fly




The same Hover Fly on a different perch

So those are just using the pop up flash then? Nice shots.

very nice shots

All these bug shots are amazing.
Surprised you guys manage to capture those fidgety fuckers, before they scuttle off.

Here's a few, the top 37 are here http://www.flickr.com/photos/28767875@N ... 838476850/

The daytime shots are overexposed and I don't have any editing software to correct them right now but they're still alright. The night shots came out very well.

















And here is my favorite picture of the night...



Click the link and look at the rest, there are some bikes in there too.

Jumping Spider compositions.................