This is a Hylaeus Bee, approx 7mm in length. Taken with Canons MPe-65 x1 to x5 life size Macro Lens with Canons MT24ex Twin Flash for lighting.
Taken at f6.3, 1/200, ISO100 and focus stacked from multiple images to achieve a much greater DOF without sacraficing detail or sharpness. All shots were taken handheld.
Posted by John Robinson on December 23, 2008 at 6:43 PM
Amazing focus stacking on hand held !
Nit picking but a shame about the left antenna.
Good stuff though.
JohnR
Posted by David Taylor on December 23, 2008 at 6:48 PM
You must have an extremely steady hand. I agree with John about the left antenna. Some very nice detail though.
Thank you, at this Mag and f-stop the DOF is minimal and would have required alot of shots to get the first antenna in focus as it was coming out towards me. I had thought about taking the other one OOF, do you think that would help?
Posted by David Taylor on December 23, 2008 at 7:32 PM
Alistair
Animate subjects such as insects are extremely difficult to photograph using the focus stacking technique, for obvious reasons. You did very well indeed with the f-stop you used and hand-held.
I would have taken at least eight images (if possible) using a smaller aperture and a tripod and hoped the subject did not move. The whole point of focus stacking, IMHO, is to maximise the amount of sharpness and detail that would be difficult or impossible to achieve otherwise, so whatever antenna you chose to be OOF would have distracted to a certain degree. My intention next year is to have go at some insects, having tried a spider this year.
Posted by Matt Cole on December 24, 2008 at 3:07 AM
Hi Alistair,
Nice to see you here on UKNP, good to have another keen macro photographer on board . This is a great shot and I know only too well how difficult it is to stack images at 5x using the MPE-65.
Matt
Posted by Tom Smit on December 24, 2008 at 3:37 AM
Lovely shot. Specially the handhold part is surprising. You must have a steady hand.
Posted by Greg Hitchcock on December 24, 2008 at 7:05 AM
Nice shot Alistair, I'm impressed 1) that you managed to get this close and 2) that you managed to get several shots to focus stack before he flew off. As Matt said, nice to see more macro!
Greg
Posted by Magnus Hird on December 24, 2008 at 10:47 AM
The facial detail, especially the eyes, is stunning. Like this a lot
Posted by David Kjaer on December 24, 2008 at 3:05 PM
Discussion
10 repliesThis is a Hylaeus Bee, approx 7mm in length. Taken with Canons MPe-65 x1 to x5 life size Macro Lens with Canons MT24ex Twin Flash for lighting.
Taken at f6.3, 1/200, ISO100 and focus stacked from multiple images to achieve a much greater DOF without sacraficing detail or sharpness. All shots were taken handheld.
Nit picking but a shame about the left antenna.
Good stuff though.
JohnR
Thanks for your comments :-)
Thank you, at this Mag and f-stop the DOF is minimal and would have required alot of shots to get the first antenna in focus as it was coming out towards me. I had thought about taking the other one OOF, do you think that would help?
Animate subjects such as insects are extremely difficult to photograph using the focus stacking technique, for obvious reasons. You did very well indeed with the f-stop you used and hand-held.
I would have taken at least eight images (if possible) using a smaller aperture and a tripod and hoped the subject did not move. The whole point of focus stacking, IMHO, is to maximise the amount of sharpness and detail that would be difficult or impossible to achieve otherwise, so whatever antenna you chose to be OOF would have distracted to a certain degree. My intention next year is to have go at some insects, having tried a spider this year.
See http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/bbs.cgi?a=vm&mr=33497&CGISESSID=83d4c1f2f7856f1c145ce8fcccfb18f9&u=25696
Nice to see you here on UKNP, good to have another keen macro photographer on board
Matt
Greg
David