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In Coming
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In Coming

by Peter Cross

Gallery: Macro & Close-upPosted November 1, 201249 views2 comments
I was in the Santa Cruz, CA area recently. One place I went was Wilder Ranch State Beach. I noticed some honey bees working some yellow composite flowers and took a few images with the lens on the camera which is not a true macro lens. Nevertheless, I was pleased with this image of a honey bee in flight headed to this flower with lots of pollen already collected on its hind legs. The smaller image suffers from the crop I used (40% of original in size). The larger one is better. In looking at my tech info, I see I was at a 41mm focal length which means I was my own worst enemy on this. Should have maxed out at 135 for a better closeup. Oh, well. Comments and critiques welcomed.

Tech Info

Canon 60D with 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 41mm
1/500th @ f/9.0 and ISO 200
handheld

Comments

2 comments
Comment posted by scott lanz on November 1, 2012 at 9:30 PM
Peter, we've had some really good some bee in flight images posted here this year, and this is another good one. The bee is super sharp, which isn't easy to accomplish. It's interesting for me to see the different methods and lenses used by different photographers to get these images. I do find the bg here just a little busy. For me, I try to isolate the bee and flower from the bg. I find that it's too difficult to use a shallow dof and get the bee sharp, but you can get away with more dof for the bee by shooting an angle that has more distance between the bee and the bg. Thanks for sharing this one.
Registered on November 14, 2003, 840 Posts, 12902 Comments
Comment posted by Wayne Jones on November 2, 2012 at 9:48 PM
Macro Shmacro; Any lens that captures close-ups will often do fine if your technique is good. In this case, despite failing to use the zoom to its max, your aperture was adequate to get the bee in focus, and the shutter speed worked well to catch the action. Wider that f/9, and you may lose focus; smaller, and the bee gets lost in the background. I think your compromise worked well enough to isolate the subject if you look only at the area next to the bee. It's the detail in the surrounding area that's distracting. If you select the area (with a feathered edge) a medium-short distance from the sharp subject, you can apply some lens blur or Gaussian blur to make it less noticeable. Next time, zooming in may make this easier, as you already pointed out.
Registered on April 18, 2007, 953 Posts, 6435 Comments