A few macro photos

I was walking in the city with my camera and a wide (35mm) lens. I also took in the bag a macro lens, “just in case”, although I wasn’t sure what would it be useful for, beyond a solitary flower here and there.

But as luck would have it, I stumbled upon a floral arrangement which was host to a lot of working bees, bumblebees and ants. Perfect opportunity for some attempts at macro work! Especially as I didn’t do many such attempts “outside” before.

A few of the photographs turned out “OK”. Not good, as there were multiple things fighting against my lack of skills and experience.

First, aperture. From normal photography, I thought that f/8 is a small aperture. Turns out that f/8 is not enough to have the entire body of a bee in focus! f/16 is good from the depth-of-field point of view, but then the light is not good enough.

Second, wind. Not in the sense of blur - high shutter speed combats wind-induced blur, but the movement of the subject due to wind makes it very hard to focus properly, either automatically or manually, as the depth of field is very thin.

In any case, learned something more. The first and last pictures in this set are my favourites; the first one due to the detail in the wings (in stark contrast to the lack of detail in the body), and the last one due to the soft colours. Here they are, or check out the entire set: