More Natural light macros

Beginning to enjoy shooting with just the 105mm EX on the 300d and no flash- rig is a lot lighter
Brian V.

Narcissus fly (hoverfly) doing a bumble bee impression

Bee on miniature Hebe blooms

Damselfly

Spider dream

Soldier fly Chloromyia formosa male

the damsel and spider are superb shots
there's something about natural light that just adds a lot to a photo

Lovely shots Brian, I prefer the look of natural light myself, it just looks...right. But I find it's much harder to do.

Dave

Great shots Brian 1+2 and the spider are excellent. I agree natural light looks loads better most of the time, but its so difficult getting the available light in England with the Mp-e, but fingers crossed the weathers warming up. lets hope it stays this way.

Finally... you've seen the light... you see what I did there?

I'll get me coat

I'd stick with the 20D Brian, you get at least a stop more on the ISO before the grain kicks in. I found ISO800 was better than 400 was on the 300D. The light on the Damselfly is just gorgeous, can't beat the real thing

Natural light? Never thought of that , we have plenty of light here in SoCal. But trying that will have to wait, I'm leaving for Japan tomorrow where it is miserable with thunderstorms and such. Talk about bad timing

I really enjoy these shots, Brian! I just love the bokeh in the spider shot

Thanks Alan,
You are right about natural light but it does seem to require slightly ovecast conditions or early am/late pm to get the right sort of light.
I find normally bright sunlight shots actually look worse than flash ones.
Brian V.

Thanks Dave,
Nice to do them when conditions allow but fairly impractical for high mag work
Brian V.

ATBphotography wrote:
Great shots Brian 1+2 and the spider are excellent. I agree natural light looks loads better most of the time, but its so difficult getting the available light in England with the Mp-e, but fingers crossed the weathers warming up. lets hope it stays this way.

Thanks Andrew

I think it's fairly impractical to do with the MPE-65- works well if the light is right for shots less than 1:1.
Brian V.

pxl8 wrote:
Finally... you've seen the light... you see what I did there?

I'll get me coat

I'd stick with the 20D Brian, you get at least a stop more on the ISO before the grain kicks in. I found ISO800 was better than 400 was on the 300D. The light on the Damselfly is just gorgeous, can't beat the real thing

Thanks pxl8
Agree when the light is good it can't be beat but as I said above there's too many times when natural light is impractical for me to swap over completely.
Think I'm going to have to start thinking about reflectors or partial screens though as I find shooting in strong sunlight gives worse results than flash.
Brian V.

dazzlebea wrote:
Natural light? Never thought of that , we have plenty of light here in SoCal. But trying that will have to wait, I'm leaving for Japan tomorrow where it is miserable with thunderstorms and such. Talk about bad timing

I really enjoy these shots, Brian! I just love the bokeh in the spider shot

Thanks Bea,
think all the best natural light shots I've done have been with slight cloud cover- strong direct overhead sun is worse than diffused flash unless you can moderate it somehow.
It's just a different style. I'm often shooting now with both cameras setup- 300D with 105mm ex macro natural light and the 20D with the MPE-65 and flash
Brian V.

Brian what was the exp for theses shots and iso the dof is realy good, even at f16 its so shallow with flash, you must have had very slow shutters speeds as the lens must be stopped down so much to get that dof, must have been a very still day with no movment at all

Martin

martin-images wrote:
Brian what was the exp for theses shots and iso the dof is realy good, even at f16 its so shallow with flash, you must have had very slow shutters speeds as the lens must be stopped down so much to get that dof, must have been a very still day with no movment at all

Martin

Fraid it varies a bit
eg spider ISO200 F10 1/200th, damselfly F6.3 ISO400 1/160th. The soldierfly was focus stacked from 2 shots.
Brian V.

Great series, especially #1 & #2.

Thanks Leorooster,
Those miniature Hebes make a great background plus the bugs like them, can play hell with exposure though.
Brian V.