Close-up Bees & Butterflies Enjoying Lavender nectar

Images of undisturbed subjects in their natural environment. All subject types.

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LVF
Posts: 66
Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:17 pm
Location: Sequim, Washington

Close-up Bees & Butterflies Enjoying Lavender nectar

Post by LVF »

After my post (Aug. 8th) on the resolving power of the Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF lens and attached Nikon 17E II Teleconverter lens, mounted on a Nikon D500 camera, I stopped doing indoor resolution chart testing. Instead, for the first time since I purchased this equipment, I took this Nikon camera and lenses out of my house to photograph the outdoors.

I went out to my back porch and sat down in an outdoor cushioned chair under an umbrella on a sunny afternoon, and relaxed with my camera in my lap.

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In front of me were my lavender plants about 5 feet away.

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I watched many bees busy gathering and eating pollen from the tiny lavender florets. The bees were quickly moving from one floret to another floret, mostly staying no more than a second or two on each floret, looking for pollen. Joining the bees were a few Pacific Northwest Skipper butterflies also seeking lavender nectar.

I raised my camera to my eye and tried to capture these fleeting bees and butterflies. The hit rate was low because the bees and butterflies were moving very fast.

Here are a couple of female worker honey bees with their jaw mandible in the floret collecting pollen.

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Here are a few photographs of Pacific Northwest Skipper butterflies with their proboscis sucking nectar out of the lavender florets.

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I was able to get more butterflies because they did not skip as fast.

Leon

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

This looks like a pleasant afternoon, and you got some good images to boot. Nice natural appearance in this set, no obvious artifacts from sharpening or noise reduction.

Going after active subjects at 5 feet is not a simple task! The hit rate is always low, so no surprises there.

Can you share some specifics about how you did it? I'm thinking high ISO, fast shutter speed, auto focus? Any support for the camera, or purely hand-held?

--Rik

LVF
Posts: 66
Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:17 pm
Location: Sequim, Washington

Post by LVF »

Thank you for your comments.

All Photos were taken hand held as I sat in the chair. I braced my left arm against my side and held the lens with my left hand. I continually pressed the AF-ON button to AF the camera as I search the lavender plants for the bees and butterflies.

I had set the D500 camera to ISO 2000 so that the shutter speed varied between 1/2000sec to 1/3200 sec. depending on whether the area was sun lite or in shadows. I set the lens to f/8 so the depth of field was shallow. That resulted in the smooth background even though there were many branches of lavender in the background.

I used Camera Raw CS6 to removed the noise in the photo (ISO 2000 did produce a slightly noisy photo). I slightly sharpen the photo in CR, setting the sharpening to 25 and no higher (lesson learned). I did these settings at a magnification of 200% and look over the whole photo as I did so. The D500 file, at ISO 2000, responded nicely to noise reduction.

I did no processing the Photoshop CS6, only use it to crop the photo and "save for web".

Leon

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

I like these pictures, and even more importantly, you enjoyed making and sharing these pictures. Well done!
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

LVF
Posts: 66
Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:17 pm
Location: Sequim, Washington

Post by LVF »

Thank you Mark

It is an enjoyable hobby. As is playing with Photoshop. I plan to play with the last photo of the butterfly to see what variations I can produce in photoshop. Just having fun.

Leon

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