Green metallic bee

mehampson

A green metallic bee (pretty sure it's Agapostemon virescens) cleaning up after collecting pollen from a flower. C&C is always welcome and appreciated.

ian408

A green bee. I've never seen one of those before. Cool!

Nice shot too. Do you stack for focus?

GOLDENORFE

Beautifull Bee! Great Shot
Phil

mehampson

Thanks for your comments!

It was actually new to me, too, though they're apparently fairly common around here. They're also called sweat bees because they're attracted to human sweat, but I think that's a catch-all term for unrelated bees that show that behavior. This kind, a halictid bee, can also be metallic blue or entirely green depending on the species.

I don't focus stack, mostly to keep my post-processing down to a minimum.
My basic technique is to shoot at f/11-14 at 1/160-1/250*, ISO 250, with a Vivitar 285HV plus diffuser at 1/16th, bracket-mounted next to the lens. With these settings I get good DOF, light, and exposure, a fast flash pulse duration to freeze the motion, and minimal noise; the downside is that it's very hard to handhold with the Vivitar so far front. The DOF is also helped by shooting the bee along the side -- her eye and most of her flank are all on the same plane.

*Actually this shot was f/13 at 1/100, to get more ambient exposure, but 1/100 was too slow in this sunlight -- I had to toss a lot of shots from this outing because of visible camera shake.

Lord Vetinari

Beautiful shot of a beautiful bee
Brian v.

mehampson

Thanks, Brian.

Here's two more I just got around to processing: