Rodney Campbell's Blog

My intention with this large bright orange flower was to focus stack and attempt to blur the large fern fronds growing just behind the flower more. The problem here was that the flower head was quite large and you’d need a reasonably small aperture to cover the whole flower head but then the ferns close behind would not blur enough and would be distractingly just out of focus. The stacked result worked to an extent – see at the bottom.

However what soon interested me more were the bees feasting on the abundance of bright orange pollen on the flower heads. I quickly took the camera off the tripod and switched to bee target practice mode – it’s surprisingly difficult to get a good shot of the bees in flight. Just getting them standing on the flower itself is hard enough because they are always darting about and once in flight it’s ridiculously hard to follow and focus on them – patience and timing is key.

Here I was glad to be using the Nikon AF-S 105mm rather than my Tamron 90mm because the Nikon focuses much quicker (which doesn’t really matter for macro but does for insects in flight :)). I upped the shutter speed and gradually closed down the aperture and pumped the ISO as I progressively moved closer and closer to frame tighter shots of the bees on the flower.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

I took well in excess of 50 frames to capture a few nicely sharp and decently composed images – the favourite of which is this one

Target Acquired

NIKON D7000 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/2000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400

and these of the bee collecting pollen on the flower

This is MY Flower!

NIKON D7000 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/2000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400

Feast

NIKON D7000 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/2000 sec at f/8, ISO 640

and here is a wider shot showing the bee in relation to one of the huge flowers (and they were very large) it was collecting from

NIKON D7000 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/2000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400

and finally the original intent – the focus stacked flower I first took – 10 frames [1/640 sec at f/4, ISO 100] – which it has to be said is far less interesting now 🙂

NIKON D7000 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/640 sec at f/4, ISO 100

Don't forget to Share...

Google

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin

Pinterest

Email

Print