Bee, Bee and Butterfly

[Columbarius]

Just like the Brown Bear in Alaska wait for the salmon to run, in the last few weeks natural history TOGs have leapt at the chance to dust off their macro lenses & push them to the limit in an effort to capture the current abundance. Here's three from today using the Canon 60mm macro, non-IS, handheld:


Garden Bumble meets Large White by PhotographyRussell, on Flickr


Carder Bee with Oregano by PhotographyRussell, on Flickr


Garden Bumble Bee and Oregano by PhotographyRussell, on Flickr

Thanks for looking, feedback welcome. Thanks.

[tesarver]

Re: Bee, Bee and Butterfly

Hi Russell. Like the composition of the images, but it seems that the focal points are a bit off. Not sure what aperture you used, but you might want to increase the DOF a bit.

On the 1st image it appears that the tail of the bee is in focus,
2nd image, the right leg of the bee is in focus
3rd image, appears to be OK

Tom

[Columbarius]

Re: Bee, Bee and Butterfly

Hi Tom, thank you for your constructive comments. I really do appreciate you taking the time to look, and feedback.

The back story is that I'm really struggling with the 60mm macro lens, I'm seriously thinking of selling it, but I decided to give it a last chance to redeem itself. They were all shot at ISO 400 f8 and only in the last one (better light) could I get the shutter speed up to 1/400. The other two were 1/60 & 1/160 respectively.

The first image was an accident. The point of focus is the eye of the Large White. It was only on processing that I saw the potential of a "stand off" composition. It might have been a better idea to blur the tail of the bumble so attention would be drawn to the White marching into focus.

I don't really like using fill-in flash with macro shots, but I guess that will have to be the next experiment. Any advice appreciated.