Couple of Honeybees and a Frog's Head

tomhooper · April 1, 2010

Got out and did a little shooting this morning. Going back out this afternoon. Bee shots are a little better. Still not quite as crisp as I would like. The frog was a nice find. He/she hopped across the trail in front of me and was nice enough to pose for a portrait.

Canon XSi, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro, Canon MT24-EX Macro Twin Lites (both heads on 1/2 power), monopod on the bees, frog handheld, EXIF embedded.

As always C&C most welcome.
Thanks for looking.

mehampson · April 1, 2010

Nice, I like the second one a lot. I have one or two similar shots, with a honeybee in that sort of "licking up" posture, but not framed nearly as well.

It does seem like these are a bit noisy, and there's some motion blur -- which I think you could definitely eliminate with that rig. I'm afraid I can't see the EXIF data. Are these cropped at all?

tomhooper · April 1, 2010

Cropped about 25% or so. Bees are still a little skittish and I can't get quite close enough. You should be able to see the EXIF but here it is for all three shots.

Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Image Date: 2010-04-01 11:30:40 -0500
Focal Length: 100.0mm
Aperture: f/11.0
Exposure Time: 0.0040 s (1/250)
ISO equiv: 100
Exposure Bias: none
Exposure Mode: Manual
White Balance: Auto
Flash Fired: Yes (Manual)
Color Space: sRGB

Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Image Date: 2010-04-01 11:19:16 -0500
Focal Length: 100.0mm
Aperture: f/11.0
Exposure Time: 0.0040 s (1/250)
ISO equiv: 100
Exposure Bias: none
Exposure Mode: Manual
White Balance: Auto
Flash Fired: Yes (Manual)
Color Space: sRGB

Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Image Date: 2010-04-01 10:58:46 -0500
Focal Length: 100.0mm
Aperture: f/11.0
Exposure Time: 0.0040 s (1/250)
ISO equiv: 100
Exposure Bias: none
Exposure Mode: Manual
White Balance: Auto
Flash Fired: Yes (Manual)
Color Space: sRGB

Lord Vetinari · April 2, 2010

Lovely captures- esp like the frog.
As Michael says the bees have a bit of motion blur so either they or you (or both) were moving too much for the flash duration to stop the movement or perhaps there is a fair amount of natural light in the shots- did you notice the amount of underexposure in the viewfinder ?
If I can I often purposely shade bugs when feeding to make sure the flash is the major light source. Having said all that actively feeding bees are very hard subjects to take.

Brian v.

mehampson · April 2, 2010

It looks like the motion is in the bees -- look at the antennae, the blur is on an axis. I don't think it's from ambient. My own experience is that on a really bright day, it starts affecting the exposure when my shutter is below 1/160 at ISO 200.

The motion blur and the noise will go away as you get closer. Here's what I think is going on: By shooting further away, the MT-24EX has to stay on longer to light the scene, because of light fall-off. Each step up in power doubles how long the flash heads stay lit. Bees are fricken' fast and 1/2000th of a second, which I'm guessing is what you're getting at 1/2 power*, is a long time -- I was shooting with my flash at 1/16th yesterday, which is about 1/16,000th of a second, and was getting motion blur from a sawfly. It may not be enough light, either, so in some shots you have to push the exposure level up higher in post, which is where you get noise at low ISO.

*I've never used the MT-24EX so I don't really know enough about its usual power settings to say much for sure. It might be that it has a naturally fast flash pulse, since it's low power, and 1/2 is a pretty typical setting. But I'm guessing it's a low-brightness strobe using normal flash pulse durations. Someone with hands-on experience with it could say better than I can. (Though I'm curious what makes you choose manual over TTL? It's a legit choice, but I don't know whether or not many people do with that flash.)

The other solution, if you just can't get close, is to push the ISO up to 200 or even 400 and the aperture down to f/8. You'd have a bit of noise from the ISO (which is easy to clean up at that level), but it'd be easier to nail the exposure from a distance at a lower flash power level so your shadows would stay clean, and you'd have the shorter flash pulse durations. And because the lens->subject distance is longer, you wouldn't be losing much DoF at f/8.

All that make sense? And I do want to point out that this is just weedy technical advice -- I like the compositions a lot, especially of that second bee, and of course I love your choice of subjects

tomhooper · April 3, 2010

I guess I shoot manual because I'm set in my ways. I started out in photography in the early 70's (was about 14 years old) with an old Anscoset Rangefinder camera I inherited when my Grandfather died. No flash or anything. I moved up to a Pentax K-1000 with an inexpensive Vivatar flash. No AF or AE or anything. Got used to doing everything myself. But I think that I'll give the TTL a try and see how I like it. I'll never shoot AE on anything other than snapshots. I do shoot AF on my telephoto shots but my Macro is manual. I have been having a little trouble getting my lighting dialed in. I was much happier with the shots I did today titled "Two more bees and a fly".
I do appreciate you technical advise. I'm really still learning the MT. Its really a lot more flash than I think I really need, but I like it.

Couple of Honeybees and a Frog's Head

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