First Attempt At Shooting A Bug v.Wasp

PUREVIL

Here is my first attempt at shooting a wasp that was on my windshield. He was injured so he wasn't moving around so I thought it was a great time to try and shoot him since he wont attack me. I shot this handheld and in order to get a good exposure I had to drop the F stop to 2.8, so thats why i have a narrow depth of field, I should have raised my ISO, I believe it was 125 or 200 but out of the 15 or so shots this is the best one. Shooting handheld was tough too. How do you guys get so much detail in those really tight headshots? and how do you get good even lighting on such a small subject? Lastly how do you get them to sit still?

Lord Vetinari

Good one - like the reflection
For a natural light shot it's often necessary to raise the ISO to 400/800 to get a reasonable aperture/shutter speed combo.
What shutter speed were you using ?
Most of the shots here you see of bug closeups are shot with flash. You can happily put the camera in M mode and shoot ISO100, F11, 1/200th

Brian V.

PUREVIL

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Good one - like the reflection
For a natural light shot it's often necessary to raise the ISO to 400/800 to get a reasonable aperture/shutter speed combo.
What shutter speed were you using ?
Most of the shots here you see of bug closeups are shot with flash. You can happily put the camera in M mode and shoot ISO100, F11, 1/200th

Brian V.

Thanks for the comments and tips.... I'll admit I always forget to adjust my ISO I dont know why! I believe I did have it in M mode and according to Lightroom, ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/25 sec shutter.

GOLDENORFE

PUREVIL wrote:

Thanks for the comments and tips.... I'll admit I always forget to adjust my ISO I dont know why! I believe I did have it in M mode and according to Lightroom, ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/25 sec shutter.

nice shot, cant believe you only got 125th at 2.8. is that right?
you do need to use flash.
phil
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

PUREVIL

GOLDENORFE wrote:

nice shot, cant believe you only got 125th at 2.8. is that right?
you do need to use flash.
phil
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

at 125th it was a hair over exposed... I think I should have raised my ISO too. I do have a 580EXII but I didn't break it out cuz I thought there was enough light with the garage door open.

Skippy

PUREVIL wrote:

Here is my first attempt at shooting a wasp that was on my windshield. He was injured so he wasn't moving around so I thought it was a great time to try and shoot him since he wont attack me. I shot this handheld and in order to get a good exposure I had to drop the F stop to 2.8, so thats why i have a narrow depth of field, I should have raised my ISO, I believe it was 125 or 200 but out of the 15 or so shots this is the best one. Shooting handheld was tough too. How do you guys get so much detail in those really tight headshots? and how do you get good even lighting on such a small subject? Lastly how do you get them to sit still?

Thats a good first attempt, PUREVIL.
Nice composition, bonus reflection in the screen too.

For natural light it's a very good shot, as Brian explained those extreme head shots are usally done using a flash.

I'd be pleased with this shot if it was mine ... Skippy
.