Bee flies, Bees and Fly

I spent a considerable time yesterday in my spinach patch practising insect photography with the 100-400mm +1.4 converter Fuji system (my lighterweight replace for the stolen canon gear). Certainly it can produce as good results in terms of focus and has the advantage of much less noise than the 7Dii. It is much slower to focus but possible with lots of practice. The first four images, one of my favourite dipteran species, the Bee fly, followed by several of the many Hymenoptera (bees) species visiting the leaves to warm up. Lastly two predators awaiting a meal - my constant Robin companion and a Hoverfly species that predates other insects.

 

 

  

Cambridge Graduate Orchestra

On Saturday, we photographed the Cambridge Graduate Orchestra concert at West Road Concert Hall - a building that has stood the passage of time well, having been built in 1978.  The lighting is very mixed so quite a challenge and many images were converted to monochrome. Some images (including clarinet soloist Poppy Beddoe) were taken at the rehearsal.

Focus Stacking

On Sunday, CCC had a focus-stacking day to share ideas and try some techniques. I am still experimenting but have settled with Zerene Stacker for my Software as it plugs in well to Lightroom and processes the images quickly and is pretty accurate. I shoot at 2.8 either on a focus rail as in the first image or using a rapid burst during which I move the manually focussed camera forward through the object keeping same focus. The first pair shows a focus-stacked image at 2.8 and the same insects at f22 to show why I use the wide aperture (to ensure an out-of-focus background). Others are examples of moving with the camera find I need to move more slowly as there are gaps in focussed areas of the photos. Zerene makes it very easy to retouch the photos.

Grey Heron Antics

I paid a quick visit to St Albans on way back from Richmond and delighted to see baby Heron triplets in one of the nests. This seems very early for almost full grown chicks but, apparently, they can lay eggs in early February. Further down, a pair were exchanging a twig very lovingly. There was a brood of 10 tiny ducklings on the lake. Unfortunately one got separated from its mother and was swimming around frantically trying to locate her.

Kew 2. Flowers

A lovely time to visit Kew Gardens with the trees just coming into leaf and lots of spring bedding to admire. I concentrated on the wildflower area where the bluebells are almost at their best (another week or so). I also practised a bit of focus stacking ready for Sunday's workshop. These were done handholding the camera and moving myself forward during a fast burst of image capture. Unstacked on left, stacked on the right (50mm lens f2.8)