Post your insects

[Franci]

A mayfly a little in advance

[Letrow]

Nice one Francesca, beautiful wings.

[Geoff F]

Found 4 Bee Flies today but, as usual, they weren't keen to stand around and pose for a photo.

This is the best I managed.

[Letrow]

Beauty Geoff. I haven't seen any bees yet (and almost no flowers). Bit envious actually.

[Brownbear]

Yes, it is a beauty Geoff.. Also Francesca, I love your mayfly.

[RaZZ3R]

The good gentlemen Letrow recommended me this thread so here I hope you may like this amateurish attempts of macro photography (hand held, manual focus, cropped or "macro tubed" for a closer view)
#1

(Really fast little buggers this ants are, even at f 16 and ISO 800 it was hard to make as large as possible the DOF and a good enough shutter speed of 1/250 to avoid motion blur, which I failed on both focus and friez motion, but after 200-ish attempts
this is the best compromise I could get at that hour of loosing light by the minute, the reason for that is that it is best to get the light from morning and sunset for more "effect", to not shadow your subject with your own or your equipment's)
#2

(I found, the hard way, that the best method of capturing flying insects are not buy running at them with a odd peace of thing pointing at them, in their perspective, but by searching a very busy, like a buss station, place and wait for them to come into your DOF focus, with slight adjustments as need be, and it was the only possible way to get this, slightly blurred because the lack of IS and shot wide open, with an M42 lens at 210mm (420mm FF equivalent on my Panasonic G2) with 3 macro tubes (11+20+30mm) at minimum focus distance hand-held with the following settings: f 4.5, 1/125s, ISO 100)
#3&4


(Be patient and luck's have it you can get, even with a nifty fifty, a good picture sometimes, because not every day is X-Mas until get enough experience that the pictures come to you and not the other way around)
#5

(And the most important thing is be there, out there, to keep shooting hundreds, thousands and even more of shots because that's how you learn and improve but more importantly DISCOVER the world, and I feel smaller than an ant every time)

Recommandation:
*Use Burst Mode, when possible, to get more candidats, specially when you manual focus and/or intend for focus stack.
*At times AF is needed but when you MF you know where the DOF is, when the camera AF's you hope for the best.
*Small doesn't make you slow so for moving targets learn their speeds and keep up with them (some ants won't suffice under 1/500s !!!).
*The more modern, newer, camera the more forgiving the ISO noise is but if you intend to crop or sharpen be aware of high-ish ISO.
*Hand-held is double but you need higher shutter speeds to compensate for hand shake, even you have Image Stabilization be it in body or in lens, but you are more flexible than on a tripod.
*If your subjects are slow or you like to work with tripod, or whatever reason, I do recommend using Joby's GorillaPod (I'm not trying to make commercials) because there very light weight, compact, cheaper and a lot more flexible (not versatile) than standard tripod, but seriously it's only 50-75$ for duck sakes.
*The hardest part (I believe) is that, in time, you have to learn the sacrifice of DOF with sharpness because (mostly) everyone wants bokeh (to isolate the subject from world) but want the subject to be in perfect focus, sharpness, but it's not that easy and you will see that in time. And, sorry but, focus stacking is not for everyone and not easy to do.

I hope my rambling will help you, with something in the future, and the OP won't be to pissed of that I converted his thread from colours into letters in my post ^_^

[Geoff F]

Syrphus torvus

A very slightly different species to the Syrphus ribesii which I normally see a little later in the year.



The females (like this one) typically have slightly wider black than yellow abdomen bands; particularly with the earlier flies. There are slight hairs on the eyes which is more obvious in males.

Some very slight pale hairs are just visible near the bottom of the eyes.

Peter. Still only a few bees around. The commoner bumblebees are starting to appear regularly but few of the solitary bees, like the Andrena species. I did get a glimpse of a Nomada bee yesterday (probably N. ruficornis) but only had chance for a quick distant snap.

[Brownbear]

Geoff... A truly stunning and inspiring photo. Thank you for sharing.

Syrphus torvus

A very slightly different species to the Syrphus ribesii which I normally see a little later in the year.



The females (like this one) typically have slightly wider black than yellow abdomen bands; particularly with the earlier flies. There are slight hairs on the eyes which is more obvious in males.

Some very slight pale hairs are just visible near the bottom of the eyes.

Peter. Still only a few bees around. The commoner bumblebees are starting to appear regularly but few of the solitary bees, like the Andrena species. I did get a glimpse of a Nomada bee yesterday (probably N. ruficornis) but only had chance for a quick distant snap.

[Letrow]

Peter. Still only a few bees around. The commoner bumblebees are starting to appear regularly but few of the solitary bees, like the Andrena species. I did get a glimpse of a Nomada bee yesterday (probably N. ruficornis) but only had chance for a quick distant snap.

Beautiful shot Geoff.
I did see one bee today but he was soon gone and I was left with the cats (you have seen those in my other thread) and some nice prunus shots.
Really eager to see more insects, but it is still cold near freezing over here in the evenings.

[Letrow]

Recommandation:
*Use Burst Mode, when possible, to get more candidats, specially when you manual focus and/or intend for focus stack.
*At times AF is needed but when you MF you know where the DOF is, when the camera AF's you hope for the best.
*Small doesn't make you slow so for moving targets learn their speeds and keep up with them (some ants won't suffice under 1/500s !!!).
*The more modern, newer, camera the more forgiving the ISO noise is but if you intend to crop or sharpen be aware of high-ish ISO.
*Hand-held is double but you need higher shutter speeds to compensate for hand shake, even you have Image Stabilization be it in body or in lens, but you are more flexible than on a tripod.
*If your subjects are slow or you like to work with tripod, or whatever reason, I do recommend using Joby's GorillaPod (I'm not trying to make commercials) because there very light weight, compact, cheaper and a lot more flexible (not versatile) than standard tripod, but seriously it's only 50-75$ for duck sakes.
*The hardest part (I believe) is that, in time, you have to learn the sacrifice of DOF with sharpness because (mostly) everyone wants bokeh (to isolate the subject from world) but want the subject to be in perfect focus, sharpness, but it's not that easy and you will see that in time. And, sorry but, focus stacking is not for everyone and not easy to do.

I hope my rambling will help you, with something in the future, and the OP won't be to pissed of that I converted his thread from colours into letters in my post ^_^

I like the butterflies and the ants especially. The ants will be small, so pretty difficult to shoot.

On the shooting itself: I shoot handheld mainly. F/11 and 1/250 sec with variable ISO. In good sunlight you can get great insect shots, but yes you have to be fast to follow them. Sunlight has to be strong though, otherwise flash would be needed and I don't like the even lighting I get with that.

[Franci]

Great shots Geoff, I share some envy with Peter. All I found here was a baby cricket

[johnbharle]

I haven't been on in what seems like forever. Business has kept me too busy, I guess. :-$ But as I was walking out my door yesterday to go shopping, I spied this little fellow. As ever, I can't seem to get all of him in focus at once, so two pictures. He's pretty, I'll say that. Not sure which end is the head and which is the camouflage.

[Geoff F]

Something for Peter, a couple of early bees; but I couldn't quite find the perfect angles, as so often occurs with insects.

Andrena fulva (Tawny Mining Bee) female in a dandilion.



Bombus pascuorum. A rather common bumblebee; but not so common this Spring. Only the second one that I have seen.

[Letrow]

Is that a zoomlens you're shooting Geoff? You get quite some detail with that 250mm lens. It isn't a macro or is it? I love your furry creatures.

[Franci]

Great shots as usual, Geoff!

[johnbharle]

Bombus pascuorum. A rather common bumblebee; but not so common this Spring. Only the second one that I have seen.

[/QUOTE]

Certainly different from the bumblebees we have in Texas. Ours are not nearly as furry. Nice shot!

[Geoff F]

Is that a zoomlens you're shooting Geoff? You get quite some detail with that 250mm lens. It isn't a macro or is it? I love your furry creatures.

It's a Sigma 180 macro lens plus 1.4x converter. I didn't need the converter for these shots but it was already attached for smaller hoverflies so I didn't bother to change it. Probably with flash. I tend to use a Speedlite with manual camera settings as my default setting. Then adjust the flash output compensation slightly to suit each scene.

Incidentally, I usually remove my deep lens hood as I find it tends to scare my subjects; although this possibly loses a little in contrast.

Shooting from around 18 ins. I nearly always use a tripod for close work because I find hand holding gives me a lot of rejects. Although having to do quick leg readjustments and positioning them when splayed out can be a bit of a strain.

Too often I accidentally touch a distant bramble which pulls a closer leaf and scares my little model!

[Geoff F]

Nothing particularly exciting.

The Early Thorn Moth was attracted to my window light so I 'invited it inside' where it was able to pose for a photograph. I used a bit of flash instead of setting up any special lighting for just a couple of quick shots.



And a closer shot of the antennae. Spring versions, like this one, are often a deeper colour.



And another bee, deep inside a dandilion. Probably a Lasioglossum species.

[Letrow]

The one in the yellow flower looks nice, probably drunk on nectar.

I have a few syrphidae, first of the year. Not as colourful as some of the others last year, but there still is time.





First sun of the year as well, or so it seems.

[Geoff F]

That looks like a male Eristalis pertinax, Peter. One of the earlier species.

And from the same family, this Helophilus pendulus seems excessively marked with extra orange where they are normally a plainer yellow. But I can't easily fit it into any of the more orange marked species. So probably just one of those early season oddities which often occur.





It has been a slow start but I am just beginning to see a few butterflies, hoverflies and damselflies, etc now. Except for today which has returned to wind and foggy drizzle!