First Bees In Flight

[newb2pro_1day_or_so]

Today I shot my first bee in flight. There are a couple of shots that I thought came out pretty good. C&C appreciated as a good portion of them came out very blurry. I wasn't sure if I should not use flash and use a shutter speed over 1/200.

1
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh59/Iseethroughglass/Bees05-23-08014.jpg

2
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh59/Iseethroughglass/Bees05-23-08016.jpg

3
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh59/Iseethroughglass/Bees05-23-08020.jpg

4
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh59/Iseethroughglass/Bees05-23-08028.jpg

5
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh59/Iseethroughglass/Bees05-23-08029.jpg

6 (My favorite)
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh59/Iseethroughglass/Bees05-23-08026.jpg

Thanks for looking

[LordV]

Look excellent to me - think you really do have to use flash to get any hope of stopping blur with reasonable DOF. Think the blurry wings add to the flight shots rather than detract. Shots I've seen taken using high speed gear actually look a bit odd with no wing motion visible.

Brian V.

[racketman]

first one is very good and has no burnt highlights.

[macro junkie]

there all good..and i love the wings blured more than when u see the wings still.how did u do this..any tips?

[MrEd]

yes please any tips. these are superb. I cant even do hoverflies in flight lol :(

[dazzlebea]

Impressive shots! The first one's my favorite, I love the angle and the BG colors.

[PaulBradley]

Hi,

I'd appreciate it if you could tell us a bit more about how these were taken - I'm interested in lens used, aperture and shutter speed and where the camera and flash were positioned and triggered - I'm guessing you set the camera up in a fixed position and waited for bees, but I may be completely wrong.

Thanks for any info.

Paul

[newb2pro_1day_or_so]

Wow, I don't believe I've ever had this much question about how I do my pictures. I'll gladly do my best to explain how I was taking these. I was out taking macro shots with my flash on a brack out in front of the camera...of course I had tubes on my 100mm macro. I saw the bees and soon found out that I wasn't able to get pictures with a setup that close...so I took the tubes off really quick. The flash was still out in front of the camera, and all these were hand held. Bare in mind, I took like 230 some pictures of the bee and these were the best so far after processing, there are still more that haven't been processed. I'd say the best shots came from the shutter speed of 1/200th of a second. The camera was set to aperature priority most of the time. This way the camera read whatever sunlight was there and still used the flash to help freeze the action some. Actually, in the heat of the moment, I had not thought of somehow using the high speed option on my 430ex to allow a faster shutter speed, but I'm pleased the way these came out. At first it was difficult to even get them to stay still, but then once they stopped playing and fighting eachother, it wasn't bad. Most of these were from one bee waiting to mount another one that was crawling around on the azalia bush. This was nice because he would float in one or two places for a period of time where I could take it's picture. I hope this helps at all. If I left anything out, let me know and I'll try my best to explain. Oh ya, it was a fairly sunny day with a cloud or two blocking the sun at times. Thanks for the comments everyone and I hope this isn't a short novel with no helpful hints.

[dpastern]

A most excellent series, my fave has to be the last image, burnt or no highlights :)

Dave

[PaulBradley]

Thanks for the info. I will be out trying this soon!

Paul