Bee on basil

[Ian Cassell]

Canon 7D
Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
1/1600 sec f/10 ISO 500
Canon 430EX + Diffuser (made by replacing lens on Better Beamer with translucent plastic and velcro)

Crop, S/H, Sharpening, slight curves adjustment in CS5

[Art Kornienko]

Nice in-flight capture, I guess a smoother bg would be nice, a bit of noise, I thought the bee might be a little sharper.

[Ian Cassell]

Thanks, Art. Are you sure about the sharpness? I was worried that I oversharpened it. I always wrestle with that.

[Julie Kenward]

Ian, I think the majority of the bee is nicely sharpened but the legs feel very oversharpened to me. I'd mask off part of the sharpening there and take it back down a notch.

Nice in flight image. As Art said less BG would have been nice but you did a great job of freezing the speed of the bee. The trick now is to figure out minimum ss so you can lower that aperture a bit and get the best of both worlds. ;)

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Ian,
Agree with a bit over sharpened.....but fantastic flight capture with excellent light. I do agree on running NR......so just keep that in mind when re-working this.

[Ian Cassell]

OK, I'll go back and work on it some more. I did one pass with noiseware pro on the BG, but I can go back and add some more. I'll also see if I can tone done the sharpness on the legs . Thanks.

As for lighting, I used to use a Lumiquest Softbox routinely on my macros. Although I've been happy with the lighting from the Lumiquest, the thing is clumsy and keeps falling off my flash. When I was out at the botanical garden this weekend shooting birds with my Better Beamer, I got the idea to glue a couple of pieces of velcro onto some translucent plastic (I used a white plastic food-chopping sheet I bought at Target which is similar in opacity but stiffer than the Lumiquest) and substituting it for the lens on the front of the BB. It seems to work very similarly to the Lumiquest, but is much more rigid and sturdier. I made the sheet a bit taller than the lens so if there was stray light it would still be diffused. Interestingly, the sheet comes in a package of about a half-dozen different colors (<$10 US) -- I'm going to cut up the other colors too so I can have some colored diffusers. An added advantage is that less room in my bag is now taken up -- the plastic diffuser sheets are thin and I no longer need to pack the lumiquest.


EDIT: I found this link to the product I used

http://www.target.com/Chefmate-4-pc-Chopping-Mat-Set/dp/B003TM1B18/ref=sc_qi_detailbutton

[Christopher Miller]

Fantastic job capturing a bee in flight, Ian. Very nicely done. Don't have any suggestions to add to those already given.

[Andreas Lentfer]

Hi Ian,
nice capture of the bee in flight. Tried some myself - not easy. To me the bee looks a bit oversharpened though.
Regards
Andreas.