Bee on Dandelion flower

[Paul Burdett]

Hi all. I normally post to the Avian forum, but due to our current lock down situation I can't get out to photograph birds. So...I've renewed my passion for macro photography and taken my Canon 100mm and MPE65mm lenses out of retirement as well as my MT24EX twin light. Here is one of my first photos. Hope you like it. Cheers and stay safe everyone.

Canon 6D, MPE65mm lens, 1/180th sec, f11, iso500, MT24EX flash, HH. Processed in adobe ACR and PS.

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

Glad to see you jumping back into macro! Lovely colors, sharp where it needs to be, like the reflections in the eye, nice comp. Hope to see more soon!

Randy

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hi Paul and welcome to Macro! I am glad you joined us. The image is a good start - sharp where it needs to be.
Two things spring to mind, maybe it is a little large in the frame - just a tad too close, a little further back would have offered a bit more DOF, and the complete flower head.
Secondly because you were close the flash looks very apparent and especially in yellows/oranges. I would suggest setting the guns to a little less power or negative TTL exposure.
It may be worth having a look at the raw file and reducing the saturation and luminosity in the oranges a yellows to see what effect tat offers.

[Paul Burdett]

Thanks Randy for the kind feedback. I've been looking everywhere at home for my Stofen diffusers for the MT24-EX...but can't find them. In any case...they are not the best diffusers. I used to follow some excellent macro photographers who made their own diy diffusers...some quite complicated! I might need to explore that again. Something Canon did not (to my knowledge) develop. Cheers.

Jonathan: Thank you!...some very good points there...I'll keep those in mind on my next "shoot". Note though, that I was using the MPE65 lens (manual lens 1x-5x) at 1X...so I was not able to get further away from the subject. Perhaps the 100mm macro would be better in that case. My aim was to get as close as possible to the Bee.
The MPE lens is a fantastic lens...some years ago I took an ant at 5X magnification...My lens was almost touching the ant!

[Randy Stout]

Jon and Paul:

After reading Jon's comments, I looked at it again, and do appreciate the brightness/flash effect. So, since it is pretty quite on the board right now, I ran a luminosity layer on the bee and the flower, and then used a 77% multiply blend mode. Of course, personal taste varies but I do think he softens the flash effect to make it less noticeable. Just an option.

Cheers

Randy

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Randy: I like the repost!...I might have a go myself with a luminosity mask...never thought of using the multiply blend mode. Diffusing the light from the twinlight is an issue for me.

[John Mack]

Looks great. Nice and sharp with good detail. Solid background as well. Quite nice.