BIMBO - what a great morning

[troypiggo]

Thanks to all the guys that turned up. Really enjoyed it, and must make it a bit more regular. The BIMBO club (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=52640) haha.

Roma St Parklands really turned it on for us, it was a lovely still and clear morning. Must admit I wasn't expecting so much variety to be around this time of year, but we ended up spending quite some time in one little corner of the parklands due to the abundance of subjects.

Been a while since I shot macro, and was a little rusty at first. Happy with results for first real outing for the season. Here's some of the macros:

- Bee covered in pollen
- Robberfly
- Another fly

And there was also a very pretty male wren posing for us. Showing off colours front and back.

[dpastern]

Ah looks like it was great fun, sad to have missed it :( Excellent shots as usual Troy. I miss seeing Robberflies, never seen one in our garden...

Dave

[[1ponders]]

I was at RSP on Thursday morning until lunch time. Fantastic place for a wander.

Nice shooting Troy. :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Hi Troy

A lovely portfolio of photos. The detail, colours and depth of focus in the insect ones are really excellent – top shots. The Wren was zipping around at a great rate of knots so you’ve done very well to capture him given that he was so far away on that perch.:thumbsup:

I learned a lot today from watching you guys at work, and thanks for remarking out loudly, in earshot of my wife, that without a Canon 100mm F2.8 L macro lens I would be wasting my time. Let’s see what Xmas brings!:lol:

Cheers

Dennis

PS – hope your clothes dried off from all that crawling in the wet grass!

[Sharnbrook]

Yes, we BIMBOs had a good time.

It's been a long time since I did any serious macro as well, and I managed somehow to set the 40D to take shots at 2 stops under exposure, which has resulted in over half of my shots being a bit "ordinary" to say the least.

Troy, that Wren seemed to be as badly behaved when you captured him, as the pose he offered me. From the V shaped set of the tail, to the posture showing his bum to us, I feel that he had a comment to make to photographers, and BIMBOs in particular.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here are my offerings, but I'm not particularly proud of any of them.

[Lumen Miner]

PffffFFFTTTTT!!!!!! ;) I'd love to be within slappin' reach of you now.
Yeah right your not!!! They are awesome and you know it!! Great job champ!! :thumbsup:

That dragon shot should be framed, those details a "SMACK" on! Phenominal!! Not to even mention the fly.

[troypiggo]

Thanks for the kind comments, guys.

Mike - nothing wrong with those. That dragon portrait shot is tack sharp.

[Dennis]

Hi Mike

Nice work – you had to work quite hard for those given the +2 stop under exposure. I like your idea of the mono pod to “lean against” – something I will be putting into practice as several of my shots today suffered from the dreaded shakes.

Cheers

Dennis

[bloodhound31]

Wow you guys. Fantastic stuff! I can't wait for my 100mm....

[astro_south]

What a great morning we had. Thanks all for coming along ... definitely something to do again and soon.

The weather and timing were great.

I don't think I had my best shooting day, but overall I got a few keepers and still came a way very happy. It usually isn't a macro shoot without nabbing at least one hoverfly shot, but the few opportunities I had today were all missed - one because I didn't realise I had on autofocus :(. As usual I also struggled to get a decent honey bee shot ... one day I hope!

Here are a few from today:
1) Dennis and Mike (Dennis in one of the rare times he was vertical ... see other thread for reference)
2)Troy shooting the wren
3) Damsel Fly
4) Damsel Fly
5) Lady Beetle
6) Lady Beetle (and Man Beetle presumably)
7) Native Bee
8) Native Bee

[astro_south]

also grabbed this native bee in flight

... and this dragonfly

... and a caterpillar

... and my attempt at the wren (with the 100mm Macro)

[astro_south]

Nice shots Troy and Mike!

[StephenM]

Great collection of images from this morning, Troy, Mike and Andrew! Just posted a few of mine in a new thread.

Thanks again, and see you on rthe next BIMBO get-together!

Cheers,
Stephen

[DavidU]

Oh yes ! What great shot's.

[bloodhound31]

I just can't get enough of this stuff!!! Was anyone using the Canon 100mm macro here? About to buy one so I am interested.

Baz.

[astro_south]

Hi Baz

All of mine are with the Canon EF100mm f2.8 macro lens. It is a cracker of a lens - super sharp. You want regret that purchase. Mine is the older (non-IS) version.

[dpastern]

#4 - cracking shot Andrew. I'm jealous, I've never managed to get this close to a damselfly, despite trying very hard.

#6 - insect porn!!!

#7 - that's a superb shot of a native bee. For those that don't know, they don't have stingers and they are very placid. Much smaller than a normal honeybee, but equally as important ecologically. I wonder if this would be better rotated 90º clockwise?

Dave

[dpastern]

Nice caterpillar, and the native bee in flight shot is most excellent. Not an easy shot to pull off imho. Very well done.

Dave

[astro_south]

Cheers Dave. I thought about changing the orientation of #7, but this was as it was taken with the bee kind of reaching up to climb so I thought I would leave it.

You will also notice some aphids in #6 ... to keep their energy up no doubt :)



Thanks Dave - much appreciated.

[troypiggo]

Baz,

All of my macro shots were with the Canon 100. So were Andrew's, and Mike "Sharnbrook" too IIRC. Dennis had the EF-S 60, and Greg (not IIS member) was using the Canon 180 and MP-E 65.

[Dennis]

Lovely shots Andrew!

My settings were auto focus (centre point) for the EF-S 60mm F2.8 macro lens and auto ETTL for the MR-14X ring flash and provided the scene was of average tonality, these setting appeared to work reasonably well, provided I shot in Raw, allowing me to "develop" the image in CS4 Camera Raw.

Where the subject was bright and the background dark, the subject was grossly over exposed as the meter attempted to lighten the darker background tones – next time I’ll figure out how to reduce the flash output by a couple of stops.

Here’s my haul for the day – I am quite pleased with the results and our outing has given me much food for thought in terms of technique and equipment set up.

Cheers

Dennis

PS – it was a real treat shooting the static caterpillar compared to chasing busy bees; all my bee shots were blurry, a combination of OOF and subject movement.

[lacad01]

Excellent shots guys, looks like you had a ball :thumbsup:

[troypiggo]

Andrew - top shots, mate. Those native bees, particularly the in flight one, real nice. Bit of trivia - I'm sure I read somewhere that they were looking at our very own Australian native bees that you shot there for space research or something, because bees pollinate trees/plants so much better than artificial means and our natives are the most efficient at doing that of all the bee species. Think they were looking at it for long space missions, self-sustainability, growing stuff in space etc.

Dennis - lovely collection there. That ringlight gives a nice light. What might help your lighting issues, not that I can see any problems above, is to shoot the camera in Manual mode and set the exposure to maybe one stop less than ambient, and play with the E-TTL flash exposure compensation down to minus 1/3 to 2/3. It's a bit of trial and error, but that's the sort of ballpark. It was a bit hard getting the ambient light right on Sunday, because it was bright/sunny one minute, then cloud passed, then back to bright sunny. Much easier if it's constant - full sunlight or fully cloudy.

[StephenM]

Nice set of Macros Dennis!

We were lucky with the weather - it would have been a wash-out this morning.

Cheers,
Stephen

[Sharnbrook]

There are some lovely shots there from everyone, in particular the native bee in flight from Andrew, Dennis's wren, Troy's robber fly, and the ichneumon wasp from Steve. It's interesting to see the subtle differences in approach to what were basically the same subjects, as well as the varying emphasis on subject matter.

As we all agree, it was a good morning out, and an exercise that we look forward to repeating.

Troy, do you know if Greg is going to post here, or on POTN? I have no doubt that he will have a good selection.

[troypiggo]

Not sure if Greg is a member here or not. He'll definitely post on POTN. I'll keep an eye out, and with his permission might put them here on his behalf for completeness. I know he has been having some computer issues lately and it has thrown his processing routine out, so might be a bit of a wait for his results. Hope not, though. I too am anticipating an awesome collection. He's a cut (or 2, or 3) above me.

[TrevorW]

Great shot's guys

[astro_south]

Thanks Dennis, and you have a nice collection there too Dennis

In regards to the background, what do you have your ISO set at? I have mine set at 400 on the 50D and this provides light and colour to the background when your flash has lit up the foreground.

[Dennis]

Hi Adam & Trevor

Meeting and shooting with a bunch of talented macro shooters proved to be a fabulous method of accelerating the developments of my own skills – I can definitely recommend it! It would be nice to see other such gatherings across the country from IIS photogs!



Thanks Troy – I’ll experiment with that approach and try various settings in our back garden to see what gives the best results.



Thanks Stephen!



Thanks Mike – I was lucky that the Wren landed in the flower bed a few metres away, and stayed put sufficiently long enough for me to squeeze off 4 or 5 shots using the 70-200mm at the 200mm end. These guys do move fast!



Hi Andrew – I had the ISO set to Auto which mainly dials in 400ASA as the default. I did change it to 100 for the caterpillar as it was a more docile target!

I was very impressed with Adobe Camera Raw for CS4 as it allowed me to claw back almost 2 stops of over exposure on the spider. I don’t recommend doing this as a standard practice though!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I had set the ration of Flash A:B to 1:4 to help with the modeling. When I shot some coins for practice, 1:1 lighting came out very flat, as expected.

Cheers

Dennis


Cheers

Dennis

[troypiggo]

"See ya next time, BIMBOs. I'll be waiting for you."

[dpastern]

hahaha, what a cheeky fly!

Dave

[lacad01]

His name wouldn't happen to be Louie would it ? ;)

[ving]

haha sounds like you guys had a ball... top shots everyone