Insects!

Once again, I took my camera armed with my macro lens to my father-in-law's backyard, which is always teeming with wildlife.  I had observed an iridescent blue dragonfly over the past week, so I was hoping to capture it's spectacular colour.  However it proved to be skittish, so I also stalked some other prey when Mr. Blue flew away before I could take his picture.





And finally, the elusive prize I chased all afternoon settled down and posed for me just as the sun was starting to set.


It's colours are gorgeous!



 - jc

Into the nest!

I was doing some work in my back yard yesterday. I wasn't happy with the way I had done a panel on my deck, so I took it upon myself to fix it. Step one: remove old boards. Step two: discover wasps' nest attached to back of one board. Step three: freak out! Step 4: grab camera and take some of the most awesome macros I've ever shot.

Let me me put this in perspective -- it really was just the start of a wasp' nest, not a full blown barracks, with only a few wasps crawling on it. So it's not like I was putting my life in danger here. The nest was about the size of a walnut, and fully attached to one board. That made it really easy to position the nest in a spot that was easy to photograph without royally provoking the wasps into launching a nuclear attack against me.

That said, I STILL took my time and moved very slowly as I took these pictures. I was also a little worried that my flash would make them go berserk, and a couple of times they certainly looked a little annoyed with me. But I guess they didn't see me as a threat to the nest, so they left me alone.

One thing that I found fascinating was that the hive is shaped like a tree. I thought at first there was a nail sticking out of the board on which they had built the nest, but the "tree truck" was actually part of the structure they had manufactured. Who knew!

Alas, I have a one-year-old running around, so I had no choice but to destroy the nest. But not before I was able to shoot LOTS of images. Here are a handful. Click on them for larger versions, and MANY more of these little guys and their nest.














- jc

Bug hunting -- this time with flash!

You'll remember in a previous post that I tried out using a flash when shooting closeup work. I had intended on taking pictures of bugs, but I couldn't find any. Well, today I did, and I used my flash to light them all up while I shot their portraits.

Different ball game with bugs, my friends. I was excited to get awesome depth of field, snappy colour, zero noise, and tack sharp results. Not as easy as as it sounds...

Problem #1: Close Focus
When shooting bugs, I focus at the absolute closest focus distance. I'm SO close that the hot spot of the flash is projected beyond where my lens is focused. I still get some light fall off due to the use of the dome diffuser, but nowhere near as much as the full brunt. I found I needed set my flash to full power to get enough light on the scene. This also meant the bugs were lit from the top, with no light at all filling in the details. The effect is somewhat cool, but bugs are much cooler up close when you can see all of the bits that make them up.

Problem #2: You Only Get One Shot to Get It Right
In 99% of the cases, the flash burst scared away the insect. That meant I had one chance -- not only to get the focus dead on -- but to make sure the flash power was right as well. In one case, the fly I was shooting was SO fast, that resulting image was JUST his legs poking down from the top of the frame as he flew away when the flash went off. Since the flash needs to recycle each time, burst mode was out too, as my flash won't keep up at full power.

Problem #3: The Flash Gets In The Way
The flash, especially with the diffuser mounted on top, is big and bulky, and bumps into stuff. Usually the plant the bug is sitting on, effectively announcing my presence and prompting the little guy to fly away.



To fix Problem #1, I needed to capture some ambient light. That meant higher ISO, and subsequently higher noise. I suppose I could have shelled out a few hundred bucks for a macro lens that gave me more working distance, like a 100mm or 200mm, or $3000 (roughly) for a Canon 5D mk ii in order to get noise-free images at high ISO, but I'm cheap, so higher ISO was my practical option. I also needed to stop down to f/11, so my depth of field was, once again, reduced.

Fixing Problem #2 and #3 were more an exercise in patience than anything else.

Now, having said that, when it works out, it's AWESOME!!! Take a look at this one:


Now a 100% crop of the eyes:


Are you kidding me??? I can literally count the eyes! No way I could get this handheld without a flash.

Here are a few more. As always, click on them for larger versions and more from the study:









-jc

Capturing Water Droplets

It rained like heck last week. I noticed the water pooling on the glass table in my back yard, and thought it would be cool to try and capture those water droplets. So I set up near the back window and tried all sorts of angles, and took a gajillion exposures. They all sucked. Every single one. To the point where I won't even bother showing you any of them. Too embarrassing.

So it got me wondering how to do those awesome drops-of-water-falling-into-a-pool shots that I see all over the place. I remember seeing in one of the Facebook groups I frequent a link to a tutorial to do this.

Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwExpFDUC9Y

The setup part is pretty straightforward, once you find somewhere to hang your bag of water from. I used my dining room chandelier and set up everything else underneath.

Here are a few of what I ended up with. As always, click for larger images and more examples in the study:













Some gotchas:

The amount of water you put in the hanging bag directly affects the stream of drops coming out of the bag. In my case, when I pierced the bag, a steady stream of water shot out sideways, creating a bit of an emergency, and I had to quickly find a way to contain the mess that was quickly accumulating in my dining room. Lesson learned, just put a _LITTLE_ bit of water in the hanging bag.

If you own a macro lens with a long focal length, definitely use it. Water splashes all over your lens if it's even remotely close. I don't happen to have such a lens, so I stopped frequently to clean up. The other main drawback is that I ended up cropping the heck out of my shots to make them look a lot closer than they really were. I lost a lot of precious pixels.

If you have a remote shutter release, use it. It allows you to concentrate on the falling water droplets without having to look through the lens all the time.

The closer your flash is to the reflecting surface, the more contrast you'll get in the water. I started with my flash about as far away from the card as the camera, and the light was spilling out onto the water directly instead of being reflected. The shots get more dramatic if most of the light hitting your scene is reflected instead of direct.

Using coloured paper to change the scene is cool, but somewhat limiting. I found it was easier and more fun to apply colour in post processing to a neutral black and white scene. Takes a bit more time, but otherwise, after a while all of the shots start to look the same. Mixing it up with various applications of colour creates variety.

Till next time, happy shooting!
- jc

Closeup with Flash

If you read my last post, you'll remember I mentioned that I wanted to try macro with a flash strobe. Well tonight I did just that!

In order to do this, you'll need a flash unit -- I used a Sigma 500 DG Super -- and something to diffuse the light coming out of your flash. I used a Gary Fong LightSphere Cloud. The LightSphere gives you the added benefit of extending the front of the flash beyond the front of your lens, minimizing shadows cast by the lens itself. Plus it spreads light in all directions, so you can be pretty sure your subject will be lit. If you click on the link above, you will be taken to what appears to be a cheesy infomercial website... but his products more or less do what he says they do, even if his marketing sucks. The LightSphere Cloud worked REALLY well for this study.

What you will get is beautiful light quality. It makes sense if you think about it, as the light source is massive compared to the subject -- bugs, flowers,or whatever it is you like to shoot up close. If you've studied lighting, you'll know that the apparent size of the light relative to your subject is very important. Bigger means softer, wrap around light that reveals form.

The other benefit I got was that I could shoot handheld and use a low ISO sensitivity -- no more noise, and the subject is nice and sharp. I could also stop down to f/16, getting good depth of field for macro photography.

Here are a few examples. As always, click these for larger sizes and more from the study.


Notice the soft shadowing and detail in the petals.


The light from the flash creates great separation from the background, as you can see how the flowers near the top get darker and seem to recede.


Another great example of how the subject is nicely separated from the background.


Just look at the snappy colour and depth of field!


I went bug hunting but I didn't find too many, so I had to settle for florals. But I'm very happy with the results, and I can't wait to try this technique on a little six-legged rascal.

-jc

Some Macro

I particularly like doing macro photography. The world looks very different when viewed up close. The best part is you don't need to go very far to get an exotic looking image. All of the examples below were shot either in my yard or in my father-in-law's back yard, which backs on to a ravine.

The final images can be stunning, but the shooting process itself is very rewarding. I like to take pictures of insects. Insects are fascinating creatures. I really see insects differently through my lens, perhaps because I am paying attention to its pose, and details. I can often make out personality traits, something I would not normally attribute to something so small. Sometimes I lose myself watching these little guys go about their business as I wait for that perfect moment when I snap the shutter.

I've been practicing a hand-holding technique for taking macro shots. Ideally you'd want to use a tripod, but bugs are skittish, and sudden movements almost always scare them away. Plus it's difficult to position the tripod such that I can actually get a decent vantage point. So I resign myself to handhold instead. I set up as follows:

• I need to keep the shutter speed fast, so I usually have to crank the ISO up to 400 or 800. I have to rely on noise reduction in post.


• When you're so close up, depth of field can be in the millimeters. So I'll compensate by using a fairly small aperture. f/11, or when light allows f/16. Sometimes I'll open up to f/8, but I won't go any faster then that -- too little of the scene will actually be in focus.


• When I see an interesting insect, I meter the scene from afar and, with my camera set on manual mode, set my exposure before i approach


• I set my lens on manual focus. This is VERY important, as the camera will not know which part of the scene I want to focus on.


• I approach slowly, adjusting focus as I go. When I am sufficiently close, I fine tune the focus until the most important part of the scene is in perfect focus. A difficult thing to do, as the slightest movement on my part changes the focus significantly.


• Breathing slowly and controlled, I gently rock forward and away from my subject. This adjusts the focus without me turning the focus ring on the lens. As the scene comes into the focus I want, I press the shutter button. In order to increase my chances of nailing the image, I usually set my camera on burst mode, and snap off two or three at a time.

Here are a few shots using this technique. As always, click on them for larger sizes, and more in the study.








This one was shot at f/8. You can see how even stopped down that far how shallow the depth of field is.


I also took a moment to take some shots of flowers in my wife's garden. She has recently taken up gardening as a hobby, and these are her first proud blooms! In this case, I set up with a tripod so I could afford a lower ISO sensitivity and a slower shutter speed. But that is not without peril, as the slightest breeze throws the scene way out of focus. So I had to be patient. Using a remote release cable and mirror lock helped to eliminate camera shake. So it really was a matter of waiting for the right moment when the wind died down enough to snap the image.







This one was actually too close to the ground to use a tripod. So I used the hand-held rocking technique to get this one.

Some things I want to try:

• Focus stacking. This is where I take several exposures of the same scene focused on different parts. The images are combined in software in order to create a vaster depth of field.


• Using a flash, either as the main light or as fill light. Should help me get the ISO down, and freeze the little guy in place.

- jc