Merci Asher. <smile>
Was this hand held? You picked an ISO of 100 which has perhaps more noise than ISO 160 yet your speed was just 1/200 which for a live bee would seem a little slow. However, I do not even own a 100mm Macro lens and have not managed to get such a well-framed picture! Even then, ISO 320 would give perhaps a sharper image and allow for flower sway. Still I can see that your bee is remarkably sharp! This is very impressive.
Thanks again. I was in Seattle a month ago and had some time to kill and I stopped by the Conservatory to see what was blooming. When I checked out the dahlias out of doors on a warm but mostly cloudy day I found one cultivar in perfect condition and that is where the bees were going and resting when too tired to move on. i.e., the shot was there for anyone with gear and technique.
Now I should remind people I am a technical shooter and craft shots rather than worrying about finding them (i.e., if I need light I add it or move twigs, needles, and leaves as needed). So since I happened upon the perfect scene I went to the car, grabbed my camera, put the Lumiquest Softbox* on the 550 EX, set the camera to AI Servo autofocus mode**, put the camera in M mode a 1/200 @ f/14, mount the flash, and start stalking my prey.
I call the technique
Daylight Fill. It is similar to dragging the shutter but is focused upon getting highly detailed shots of tiny subjects in direct sun or on a cloudy day. It is the opposite of using fill flash as the flash is dominant and daylight is simply used to control the color of the areas of defocus/boke.
The aperture f/14 is a value I came to through experimentation on the eyes of a dragon fly which stayed stationary for 20 minutes for me on a cloudy day. Past f/14 the EF 100/2.8 USM Macro has serious loss of detail from diffraction. At wider apertures too much DoF is lost for my vision of the scene to be realized.***
This ISO of 100 was used as I find it has the least noise on the Rebel XT sensor. Without flash I use ISO 200 or ISO 400. But with exposures exceeding 1 second noise becomes prominent above ISO 100 (noisy skies rather than smooth creamy defocus).
* A 4x8 inch Velcro mounted softbox.
** AI Servo mode (Canon) is thought of as sports/action tracking mode. But for me I think of it as IS for forwards and backwards shake during handheld macros. This is unlike how I have heard VR fails at higher magnifications on the new Nikon 100 mm macro.
*** One exception with the F 100/2.8 USM Macro is that at 1:1 f/10 has better detail for non-frame-filling subjects as there is too much diffraction at f/14 at that scale.
The hairs are so clearly demonstrated. I wonder if there is a function of the hairs beyond carrying pollen. Maybe the hairs increase the buoyancy of the bee by increasing its volume at little cost in weight. Also with more hair, it could function longer as autumn approaches and temperatures drop.
My understanding, not being an entomologist, is that the hairs serve many purposes. They can collect pollen on purpose, albeit that is usually stored intentionally in the pollen baskets on the rear pair of legs (I can find an example image if needed). Hence I suspect the pollen on the hairs serves a larger ecosystem purpose of pollinating the blooms.
The hairs also serve as insulation. Some species are dependent upon insolation**** (direct sunlight) to warm up enough to have the energy to use their flight muscles. Other species can actually exercise their flight muscles pre-flight to warm up enough to have the energy to fly. Hence the extra insulation can extend the length of time during a diurnal cycle in which they can work. So not only can that get a longer working season, they also got longer working days.
**** Note the 'sol' in in
solation which stands for out star, Sol, commonly called the Sun.
Do you think we are seeing pollen all over the petals giving a somewhat rough appearance or is this a sharpening or JPG artifact?
I save fairly high quality JPEGs using
Save As (quality 8) in PS rather than
Save For Web so those details are pollen or pistils/stamens and not artifacts. i.e.,
I'm getting closer to getting one of these magic lenses! Either this or a Sigma.
Thanks for sharing. We still have enough warm weather for these pollinators. I hope they are not yet Africanized, although I understand the honey is even better!
Asher
Thanks again. No worry about them getting Africanized. The aggressive dominant gene of Africanized honey bees only affects Apis meliflura (sic) the European Honey Bee. This gene does not affect the thousands (millions?) of other bee species.
As to the lens, I am very fond of it. It is even viable on a 1.6 crop sensor as an intimate portrait lens (not busts, but details of faces without the top of the head and such. The boke is occasionally off, but that is in a rather limited range of defocus distance from the plane of focus and the rest is nice and creamy.
As always Sean - nice shot!
Asher, I suspect the ISO 100 was to get DOF, and 1/200 is fine for an insect at rest (again to get DOF).
Thanks Don.
ISO 100 was for noise, the flash was for DoF (f/14), and the 1/200 is the x-sync speed.
all the best,
Sean
