Wasps, some in flight

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

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Dalantech
Posts: 694
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:57 am

Post by Dalantech »

Really good set of images Nick, both of them! I appreciate the fact that you're trying to produce images that look good edge to edge -we need a lot more of that in the macro discipline.

As for the fly shots: Are you setting the shutter that high to make sure that there isn't any natural light at all in the scene? If so that's something that I wish I could do with my rig.

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Post by gardenersassistant »

Dalantech wrote:Really good set of images Nick, both of them!
Thanks John.
Dalantech wrote:I appreciate the fact that you're trying to produce images that look good edge to edge -we need a lot more of that in the macro discipline.
That's not quite what I'm going for, although it might sometimes have that effect. I'm going for as much of the subject as I can get within the depth of field. It's somewhat similar with flowers etc, at least as far as the subject goes. I use a different technique for that (well, two techniques actually). And there I'm definitely not trying to get edge to edge sharpness. But those are more close-ups than macros. And there is generally more scope to "work the background" than with macros, at least for the scenes of both types that I tend to photograph.
Dalantech wrote:As for the fly shots: Are you setting the shutter that high to make sure that there isn't any natural light at all in the scene? If so that's something that I wish I could do with my rig.
Yes indeed. It was a sunny and, for here, very bright day. Being able to use fast shutter speeds with normal flash is one of the advantages of those bridge cameras with leaf shutters. On that day I experimented and found that 1/2500 was as fast as I could go before the flash illumination started to dim noticeably. (And it dims gracefully too - not a stark on/off bar, but an overall dimming. It might have been dimmed a bit anyway for those shots. And might there be some vignetting when you get near the pre-dimming max? I don't know, I haven't checked that. I didn't notice any, and I was cropping a fair amount so it might not have made much difference anyway)

My memory of the session is a bit hazy, but as I recall I checked how it looked with that shutter speed and aperture and the flash off. I don't recall if it looked absolutely black, but I'm sure it looked very dark indeed.
Nick

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Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

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