Bees in flight series

Very challenging to catch these in flight.

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BEAUTIFUL

Incredible! Great shots.

Very nice! Looks like all your effort paid off! I love the lighting. #2 is my fav.

Very nice I like the 2nd one the most

Very nice shots. I can see how that might be a bit tough to do and get good photos like you did.

Super!

p.s. How did you catch them in flight, actually? Moving the camera on tripod or hand-held? What camera and lenses? What focus settings? Anything you find useful. Thanks.

blindone wrote in post #8344428
Super!

p.s. How did you catch them in flight, actually? Moving the camera on tripod or hand-held? What camera and lenses? What focus settings? Anything you find useful. Thanks.

These are all hand held shots. I use a 40D and a 70-200 2.8 lens. For these I used a 12mm extension tube to allow me to get closer. My ISO setting is 800. Aperture used is 3.2. Shutter speed used was either 1/6400 or 1/8000.
I used mainly AI servo but took a few with one shot. I picked this plant because I could keep the sun to my back. It also had fewer flowers than some of the others in our yard this made it a bit more predictable on which flower they they would go to. That's how I could use one shot. Focus on the flower hold the shutter half down recompose and wait for the bee to show up in the view finder. With AI servo I would try and follow them with the camera. All bees are fast but some will hover a bit longer than others. Those are the ones I tried to wait for. All in all many more misses than not.

Thanks for looking everyone.

Thank you very much for the explanation. Again, they are great shots.

Looks like you nailed them.

HOBO_sm wrote in post #8346667
Looks like you nailed them.

Thanks you!

Again very nice captures, how close does the extension tubes allow you to get, ass I have the lense and have thought about getting the tubes but cant find alot of info on them.

thisbejonas wrote in post #8350048
Again very nice captures, how close does the extension tubes allow you to get, ass I have the lense and have thought about getting the tubes but cant find alot of info on them.

About 2.5 feet. it also depends on what focal length your shooting. Closer at 70mm than at 200mm. You also limit the distance your lens will focus at. It is around a 10 - 12 inch depth that it will focus.

I bought the kenko tubes.

Excellent series! The Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L lens is fantastic glass.

Thanks for sharing how you managed to get these great shots