Bee Identification

I knew that identifying Britain's bees was not going to be easy but it is certainly proving quite a puzzle as many species are very similar and  there is much variation within each species. There are 24 species of bumblebees, around 225 species of solitary bee and just a single honeybee species in Britain. Just to confuse things further the last image is a bee-mimicking Hoverfly!!

Cambridge Camera Club Exhibition

It is that time of year again - the CCC Exhibition is on until Saturday (10 - 5pm) at St Andrews Baptist Church. Free Entry. There is the adjacent Stoneyard Cafe for coffee, tea or lunches so do come and visit if you are free. Images from last night's Opening.

Pasque Flowers 5: Bluebells 10

Barry joined me on my annual pilgrimage to Therfield Heath for the Pasque flowers and Gamlingay Woods for the Bluebells and other Spring flowers. There is a reasonable display of Pasque flowers this year with some already over and some still to come out - the snails are munching their way through quite a lot of them. The Bluebells and Oxlips are at their best at the moment and a very good year. 

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.