Coming in Hot and Heavy

[Rob]

My first attempt at capturing a bee with my D70s, 18-70 kit lens will have to suffice for now.
This little fellow had just departed the lavender and was clawing the air en-route to the nasturtiums. Marvellous workers.

A higher ISO or faster shutter speed to clarify the moving bee?

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[MontyDog]

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax;

 

[greyflash]

Hey Rob, most of us don't even attempt that. At least you have captured him reasonably well.

 

[Greg]

Well, that makes me want to try again. very good capture.

 

[Flew]

Rob,

What were your shutter speed and aperture settings? Looks like you may have had a shallow DOF, and the bee wasn't in the center of focus. Could be motion blur though. Only way to know for sure is to see those numbers.

Excellent shot in any case. :wink:

 

[Rob]

Hi Flew, I deliberately cropped the bee just off centre, artistic leanings!
I've been meaning to ask how I publish exif data here, as I know some will not comment unless the background info is available.
I've just dug out the file and remember reading about shallow depth of field, not really understanding it, just trying to achieve a blurred colourful background with the subject in focus. The blur is probably my ancient bones and joints shaking. 8)

Exp. 1/500
Auto
Focal length 70mm
f4.4
Metering, pattern

Thanks for the interest.

 

[Flew]

Rob,

When I want to include EXIF info (or when someone asks), I can copy it from a screen at smugmug. If you use them it makes it real easy. Don't know about pbase or any of the other hosting sites though.

From the info that you give here, the DOF would be about 0.025 inches at 5 feet at 70mm focal length. That's pretty shallow, so it may just be that the bee was not in the center of the DOF. Still looks pretty good to me. :wink:

 

[Rob]

Thanks Frank, I'm just installing Joe Colson's exif system. I just cannot get it to include my name. YET!!!!!

 

[mrtac2man]

easy way to get exif data.. if you are using windows picture and fax viewer to look at your pictures .. simply right click on picture .. click on summary then click on advanced all the data will show .. hope this helps no reason to download exif viewer..

Tim

 

[mrtac2man]

by the way.. nice shot for the kit lens.. good job

 

[Rob]

Thanks Tim, this is a learning curve like a Norwegian ski jump, in reverse. :shock:

 

[kramp]

That's pretty good, the kit lens is so versatile.

Someday I would like to get into high speed critter photography but I haven't got up the nerve to spend the money on the equipment and start experimenting.

What I do know about it is they use flash to freeze the motion since flash duration is way shorter than shutter speed, they use laser triggers to trip the shutter and flash so they go off when the subject is in perfect focus and they use special shutters that go on the front of the lens that are extremely fast.

Also they set up the scene so they have the exact background and lighting they want. Sometimes they will use tunnels to guide the bee to the setup.

To answer your question about clarifying the bee, a couple of flashes run in manual triggered by the built in flash would be the easiest, they don't have to be fancy flashes just something with manual power adjustment and optical slave triggers on them, the trick then is getting the bee in the depth of field, with the flashes you will be able to use a smaller aperture and that will help some.

I have some high speed links I can post if your interested and if you haven't heard of Stephen Dalton give him a google he is the father of high speed insect photography.

Martin

 

[Rob]

Thanks Martin, way beyond my expertise at present, but something for future reference. :wink:

 

[Chris101]

... A higher ISO or faster shutter speed to clarify the moving bee?

Hi Rob, that's a great shot!

A higher iso would give you the ability to get a faster shutter, as well as add some exposure so shadowed parts of the bee will come out. There is however, quite a bit of detail hidden in there, so I did an over all Grain Surgery with a bit of USM to keep the noise removal from softening the bee details.

Then I copied out the bee, leaving a pretty large outline (~15 pixels) all the way around. Make a new layer for it. Apply Shadows/Highlights to bring out the shadow details. Then apply a 20% Sharpen brush to the details of the bee. Do a Smart sharpen and a 200:0.2:0 usm. Now comes the tedious part.

At 400X, use the eraser (1, 3 and 5 pixel brushes) to remove the (now light and very noticeable) outline , along with any bright halo from sharpening:

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ps, Rob, did you get that script working?