Macro Practice at Paxton Pits

 Photographers are never satisfied with the weather - today was a bit to hot and breezy for our macrophotography session at Paxton Pits as the insects were sheltering from the sun or waving around on leaves. All the Damselfly species other than the Emeralds are now on the wing and we managed to find most species and also an obliging Hairy Dragonfly perched plus quite a few views in the air together with the occasional Green-eyed Hawker etc. Right at the end we came across a couple of unusual Shieldbugs - Eurydema ornata only appeared in the south of England in 1997 and seems to have abandoned its usual coastal preference.

28th August Paxton Macrophotography

Yesterday was our second Macrophotography Day at Paxton on a very warm humid day. Having talked about the various techniques that could be used in the field (depending on camera models, type of image wanted visually and the intended use of the image), we spent the rest of the day on the reserve finding some models for our techniques.

 Image 1 (Green bottle) is a stack of Raw images using in-camera Bracketing and stacking in Zerene stacker.

 Images 2, 3, 4, and 5 are in-camera stacks producing a jpg image (Olympus OM-D EM5iii). 

Images 6-10 are single shots with a wide depth of field (1/250 sec F14) 

 Images 11-14 are set on Procapture (1/2000th f8) hoping to capture flight!! I was particularly please with the Spiked Shieldbug as I had never recorded how the wings unfold in Hemiptera before.