Native Bee

[Paul Burdett]

Hi all. I'm really enjoying my garden at the present time...growing lots of things to eat, thanks to my wife. Meanwhile I'm enjoying the macro photography opportunities during the present restrictions (so no birding for a while). These native Bees are around 3-4mm in length and seem to enjoy the Radish flowers.
Canon 6D, Canon MPE65mm macro, 580EX flash with diffuser, f8, 1/800th sec, iso800, manual mode HH. Cheers.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I like the composition, the bee is nicely surrounded/framed by flower the head. The bee appears to be in focus but the dof seems to be a little awry. It could be that the bee is in better focus than I think due to the lighting, am I right in guessing you illuminated from the sides, I get the impression that little light went forwards......I am guessing here so correct me if I am wrong. Maybe review the angle of the flash heads..... I will be interested to see what you think.

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Jonathan. Thanks for the feedback. As far as dof goes, I only wanted the Bee in focus (really difficult as they are so small and using the MPE lens is so difficult to use). I used the 580EX flash (with soft box diffuser) directly in front of the flower, not from the sides. Had I have used my twin light I could have adjusted the angles etc, but the light from the twin flash is quite harsh, and I haven't found a good diffuser for each light. Also, I can't seem to find my Stofen diffusers for the twin light...they don't really diffuse well anyway. There's lots of diy solutions on the net, so I may have to do that at some stage. Meanwhile the Canon 580EX seems to work quite well.