Pulling back a little...

IPClark

A couple of days ago I headed over to a little park in wonderful little place called Hale Village (not too far away from where I live). There's a small wildflower meadow there, Cornflowers, poppies, the big daisies.

It was rather windy and the bugs were quite active (mostly bees, hovers and Cockchafers).

Using my normal settings were blowing the daisies completely out and making shooting the darker bugs on the white flowers very difficult so I experimented a little (on some of the shots, not all) by upping ISO settings and reducing flash output right down to try and balance out the light a bit combined with actually pulling back a bit from full 1:1 macro to try and show the bugs in a more natural environment and with a more natural light feel.

Anyway, here are 15 (Yes FIFTEEN - I do apologise for so many) images to claw your way through. Image quality isn't brilliant on a couple of the bugs. Perhaps a little too dark.

These are taken with a fixed ISO of 800 and aperture of F8 on Aperture priority, still with flash but reduced right down. The shutter speed shown is based on the cameras choice based on ambient light.

1/800th


1/2500th


1/800th


1/1600th


1/1000th


1/250th


1/1000th


1/400th

IPClark

...and these shots taken with my regular settings of 1/200th, F11, ISO 200 and regular flash output.



Could this be a little tiny baby SBC?




Just missed the focus on the eye here

Lord Vetinari

Lovely series - I do like natural light shots.
Brian v.

IPClark

Thanks Brian. Much appreciated.

Think I'll head back over there next week. Is only 5 miles away. We hadn't been to the park before and decided to take the little'un there one day. Great place because with it being a small village, the park doesn't get overloaded with hundreds of kids and tonnes of squawking (overly scouse :-/ ) parents like other parks do plus I feel much safer with my kit - sad to say.

When I first found this little meadow, there were a lot more different bugs but I had no camera with me. Typical

GOLDENORFE

I like shooting with higher ISO & flash , looks more natural compared to.full flash at less magnifications .
Good experiment

IPClark

Cheers Phil, Yeah it was interesting to try different techniques. Think there's almost a slightly retro feel to the shots.

TEdwards

Well done, Ian! Great captures.