It’s a Bugs Life…
by Rodney Campbell on Jan.07, 2013, under Life, Photography
I was initially just looking to capture some macro shots of some of the nice flowers in my dads garden when a few small bugs on flowers and plants caught my eye…
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’m not sure what insect this is but the flower was lovely 
NIKON D600 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/250 sec at f/9, ISO 320
I think this was some sort of juvenile bee (it was smaller than a “normal” bee and seemed to lack colour – to the naked eye it looked grey and “fluffy”) – I even managed a few nice handheld macro shots of it
NIKON D600 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/250 sec at f/9, ISO 500
and this one shows a very nice sharp closeup view around the eye (luck more than anything)
NIKON D600 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/250 sec at f/11, ISO 1100
Lastly, I’d long wanted to take one of those classic shots of a ladybug walking along the edge of a nice green leaf or blade of grass but had never had the opportunity to give it a try. As luck would have it I just noticed this really tiny ladybug when photographing the flower on this plant. It was wandering continuously up and down the long leaves and it was a real PITA trying to capture a decent image since it was always moving and trying to AF at this distance was… lets just call it “challenging”. Anyway I managed a few shots I was pretty happy with including…
NIKON D600 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/250 sec at f/11, ISO 2200
.
NIKON D600 + 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105 mm, 1/250 sec at f/11, ISO 560
-
Hi! Welcome to Rodney Campbell's Blog!
Thanks for dropping by! Feel free to join the discussion by leaving comments, and stay updated by subscribing to the RSS feed. See ya around!
Follow Me!
January 10th, 2013 on 12:10 am
Rodney – like you, I started with a D7000 and have moved to the D600. My only concern with the D600 is white balance, and in fact, I’m thinking about returning my D600.
I shoot RAW plus JPEG, and in Photoshop I compare my processed RAW with camera’s JPEG as a reference. I own a grey card, but I seldom use it because this work flow has worked well, especially with my D7000.
But with my D600 the indoor JPEG’s, under Artificial lighting, are too yellow.
This makes me doubt all my shots.
Do you get similar results? And how are you dealing with it?
Thanks,
Bill
January 10th, 2013 on 5:57 am
Hi Bill
I don’t shoot RAW+JPEG to reference but I do shoot RAW with AutoWB pretty much all the time and in Lightroom or Camera RAW you’ll get the as shot WB by default (which should be the same as a JPEG if it was taken) so you can see how that looks as say compared to changing the WB to any of the preset settings. I have to admit I generally just tweak the WB sliders to taste and have never really worried about the WB being “accurate” – sometimes if I’ve shot in an obvious condition (e.g. outdoors on a sunny day) I’ll just mass select all the images in Lightroom and just select the Daylight WB and be done, likewise if I tune the WB for indoor shots I’ll do similar – select all the images and tweak one which sets the WB for all of them. That said I’ve not noticed any significant difference between the AutoWB of my D600 vs say the D7000 (or even D90).
Do you have any other settings setup on your camera which could affect the colour of the JPEG’s – e.g. the WB tune thing which lets you bias the WB in any direction (which I’ve not used myself but know it exists) or picture controls (e.g. vivid, etc)?
Rodney…
January 10th, 2013 on 3:55 pm
Thanks. I have been testing my D600 in various light settings.
I’m happy to say I’m growing to like the camera more and more.
I think I need to give it a little more time.
Thanks,
Bill