As always John your pictures are stunning. I love the middle one with the bee wrapped around the stamen.

Dalantech wrote:Excellent composition!

A complement from you has made my day, thanks!

This is an excellent picture. You definitely hit the mark. What is especially well done is the white flower, as it is difficult to not blow out the color on that. Well done! Thank-you, yeah adjusting exposure to leave enough room in the range to expose for the dark bee but not blowing out the white...

Really refining my live active bee technique this year, set my self a goal of a full body shot but with eye detail of a live active bee on a flower. A few sessions out in the sun and I was able to grab this. I think this is a buff-tailed because of the small buff colour on the front of the rear whit...

Very attractive composition and nice, natural looking lightning! But what happened to the left front leg? It looks as if there are some tiny claws, though it is much shorter than the left. Could it be a lost leg partly regenerated? That's pollen from the daisy. I think the spider is dead and posed....

Amazing work as always John, you always get the most I've ever out of that MP-E 65. Has your lighting diffusion setup changed recently? I believe you were trying out some new materials?

Someone else on this forum had shared this video that had a good homemade solution to what you're looking for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97hgW9OjgPI&list=FL7S-5K6FVlW3WZMsqIrmjWA&index=7&t=7s It's only lacking the X and Y adjustments but you can buy a XY macro rail for that and mount it on th...

I like to do some lens focus adjustment based stacking in forests, mainly mushrooms/lichens etc only 1x. I currently use a tripod that inverts but I find this awkward to adjust and to move around the forest, often I just lie my camera on a sheet of plastic but then it becomes hard to micro adjust fo...

I've been looking at this lens online for a while but it does seem most appropriate when used for video, i'd be interested if someone has some demo of interesting still shots taken with it.

That watermite shot is something else, really cool

How do you get anything alive to stay still long enough for a handheld stack more than 2-3 images? I need to practise more..

Lovely shot, how was the stack achieved?

I've never found a butterfly like this is there a trick to finding them early morning, still and dew covered?

As I think I mentioned before, most of my macro photography is of live subjects, in the natural environment, using a macro ring flash. However, sometimes its nice to 'play around' indoors, especially with winter ahead of us. Photography, from wildlife, to landscape, and travel etc, is a serious hob...

You don't generally need a focal length adjustment for studio stacking. That looks like a bee rather than a hoverfly, hoverflies don't have the long segmented antennae. What's your goal with this stacking rig? Artistic or documentary? The results don't seem to be giving you something which is not ac...