It was one beautiful Sunday that I looked forward to hanging out with some friends, but one of them got into close contact with a Covid positive patient, so she had to self-isolate and the plan got cancelled. My Sunday was suddenly free and I decided I wanted to do something with my camera. It has been a while since I last did insect macro so I decided to bring out the Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 macro lens for a spin and revisited the Butterfly Park, which I have not been to for possibly over 2 years, since before the pandemic/multiple lockdown started. I am glad the place is still alive, though they are only open in the weekends. So it became a Sunday macro adventure, and I wanted to share some shots I have taken here in this blog.
I have a made a video to show you around Butterfly Park and also behind the scenes of me in action, capturing some of the shots. You can find the video here (click).
The gear setup was the usual combination that I have used all this time, and there was nothing new or different. I used the Olympus 60mm macro on OM-D E-M1 Mark III, with FL-LM3 flash attached to trigger wireless flash. Off camera external flash was my old, old FL-50R which refuses to die, and I diffused the light with a small square softbox. Nothing fancy really, I have been using this setup for years and it has gotten me some pretty good results.
Camera setting wise, things were quite straightforward. ISO was set and fixed at 200 at all times for best dynamic range and detail retrieval, since I am using flash, there could be unwanted highlights. The camera was set to full manual, with shutter speeds at 1/200 to 1/250, aperture varying from F4-F10, depending on how much depth of field I needed in my frame. I can't just shoot F2.8 and have only one small part of the eye in focus and everything else blur, we want to see as much in focus and sharp as possible. Flash was fired off camera, left to TTL, and sometimes full manual when I know exactly what I wanted in my exposure outcome. The difficult part was to nail focus - any slight movement, even just millimeters away, you get soft or out of focus output.
I always have plenty of fun doing insect macro, these little critters are so fun to work with. It was a Sunday well spent, I must say!
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fantastic pictures... you should send your insect photos to some natural history photos competition or magazine, or at least upload them to iNaturalist or a similar website... thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteGreat photos, can't stop looking at them. The video on Youtube is very helpful, thanks.
ReplyDelete