Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Some recent photos of a carpenter bee in flight and a bold jumping spider.

D70, 105mm macro, f/5 and 1/500s, SB800 flash on camera, hand held

same settings as above

D70, 180mm macro, f/11, 1/60s, camera resting on fence for stability, bright sun w/no flash

Cheers,
WK

You have me completely baffled. Those carpenter bee shots are amazing. I have tried to photograph butterflies before and I struggled for an hour and then gave up without more than a few shots while they were sitting still. How did you get them mid flight? And focusing???

Great shots.

Rich
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bigdnutz
1.2 Suriname Boa
1.0 Venezuelan Boa

Thanks Rich. I probably wouldn't have been able to get the bee shots if these carpenter bees didn't have the habit of hovering for several seconds in one place. I used a relatively fast shutterspeed to freeze the action along with flash so that the fast speed didn't result in underexposed images. I also used the shortest of my macro lenses because the shorter focal length lets more light in for a given aperture diameter, which translates into faster usable shutter speed for a given aperture setting. The aperture was also relatively large in diameter (lower f stop) to blur the background behind the bee.

I focused the shots manually, holding as still as possible.

Note the different aperture, shutterspeed, and lens length used for the spider, which is a much more stationary subject

Cheers,
WK