I got a second-hand Canon EOS 750D with a Canon EF 75-300mm F/4-5.6 lens.
I’m trying to take photos of the bumblebees around my garden, but they always look a bit fuzzy (and not just in the bumblebee way ;-).
Here are examples of my shots:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/262750767
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/259481943
Any tips for sharper photos? Thanks!
Unfortunately, your metadata is available so I can’t see what setting you had on your camera when you took those shots. Maybe try setting your camera to M mode for manual and increase the shutter speed to around 1/2000th of a second and also increase your aperature to something like F8 to F11. Lenses are generally sharper a few stops above the baseline number, in your case F4, so this may help your case. Also set your Auto Focus or AF mode to AI servo for moving subjects. Anyway, see how that’s works.
Thanks, I’ll try that out. I’m also not sure what mode I was in at the time. I remember seeing slower shutter speeds though, like 1/500. Do you happen to know how I’d keep the metadata? I used the Canon Camera Connect app to transfer to my iPhone, and then uploaded to inaturalist from the iPhone.
Like alfamax says, for sharpness you need higher shutter speed (unless you’re not so concerned about catching them in flight), and a higher f-stop. Which can often translate into a higher ISO, which then often creates higher noise levels.
Using a flash will give you a big break on a lot of that. But then that’s more gear, and often trickier until you learn more about the best settings for your gear and scene setup.
There’s also the decision to move to shooting in RAW instead of JPG, which can really ease the noise problem of higher ISO – provided you get around learning to edit RAw after shooting.
Until all that, I would really suggest just slowing your approach right down as much as possible to get in closer with the shots. And start shooting in the coolness of the morning when the bees are a little slower to fly. Work on getting your focus and exposure optimized on perched bees where you can use much lower shutter speeds like say 1/400s, and with a higher f-stop will help you work up the skills to moving on to shooting them in flight at higher speeds, if flight captures are what you really want.
Another tip? Don’t wait to find another bee to practice. Even a slow goer like a ladybug will give you a lot of good practice time for focusing and exposure. And count your blessings that you don’t need to count your pictures! Old farts like me who learned the basics with film cameras would have killed to be able to go out and shoot two or three hundred practice/skill-building shots in one afternoon like anyone can do now with the digital cams. Unlimited practice is an incredible gift! Keep clicking!
Experiment with settings and approaches and study what you learn and you will get there much sooner than you can imagine.
And have fun because it’s all there to have.
I am not an expert by any stretch but I know some people who like to shoot in manual focus mode so they can control what the sensor is focusing on. Just a thought. Maybe it will help, maybe not. Best wishes.
I’m not totally sure what’s going on there but either the Canon Camera Connect app or the iPhone’s Photos app could be stripping or altering the metadata during the transfer. Try using a cable to connect your camera directly to a computer or use an SD card reader for your iPhone that way the photos might transfer straight from the camera without any apps that could be messing with the metadata. Having said all that I don’t think camera metadata a critical thing on inat, though someone else might have some thoughts on that.
Highest possible shutter speed, flash (should be inbuilt on the 750D), Start with about f/8 for aperture. and lots of attempts. Bees tend to move quickly so getting photos that are in focus may take some patience. Lastly if your budget permits look into getting a second hand 100mm+ Macro lens as you will get much better image quality.
I don’t have bumble bees here in Australia so I have included some of our native bees as an example with shooting parameters (I should also note that my rate of “good” images is at most 5% so it does take patience).
Canon EOS 60D + Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II + extension tube. 1/250sec, ISO 100, f/9.
Canon EOS 60D + Sigma 105mm macro. 1/250sec, ISO 100, f/8.
You should be able to easily get sharp bumble bee photos with that camera. I use a Canon 60D.
With your camera and lens, here’s where I would start with camera settings:
If these setting are all new to you, you can find how to set them from the owners manual, or just google it. None of it is difficult. One more tip, remember what you changed and set everything back when you’re done. These settings work well for bees, but probably won’t work great for taking pictures of plants or kids or landscapes.
In addition to camera settings, there are other simple strategies that will help. For example:
Good luck!
Nice shots.
Have you tried using continuous autofocus (AI Servo on Canon) to track the bees as they move?
Does that lens have image stabilization? If you don’t, then upping the shutter speed will help a lot.
Regardless, you will get a lot more bad shots than good shots, so taking a lot of pictures is often needed.
Thanks all! I followed the settings suggested by @tony and took practice shots on ladybugs (as that was suggested, and no bees were around anyway). Here’s one cropped shot:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/262862374
That was 1/500, TV mode, ISO 800, f stop around 12 0r 18, AI Servo, single point of focus. And no, I dont see an IS option on the lens.
I wasn’t able to get that close with the 75-300mm lens and still get it to focus, so I dont think its the best lens for non-flying small insects. I usually use the macro attachment for my iphone for ladybugs.
I look forward to more experimentation tomorrow with these settings. I also bought “EOS 750d for dummies” which made it easier to follow your advice.
Thanks again!
If you don’t have the funds to invest in a dedicated macro, consider getting a Raynox-250 macro converter lens that will just clip to your 75-300 and instantly give you much more manageable macro focusing and magnification. Plus you can also use it on any camera and even that dedicated macro lens once you do get one, for even greater magnification.
Also, if you don’t have tons of money for a dedicated lens, look into a Laowa MANUAL dedicated macro. Fantastic lenses at a fraction of the cost of an automatic. And you can sometimes find used Laowas to really save (that’s what I did).
I actually prefer manual lenses for macro because focusing is such a challenge and to just turn a lens is often the quickest way to a sharp shot.
Once you have a good working focus for a shot with a manual, often you just leave it and move around the subject clicking when things come into the focus zone.
I specialize in insect photography, so I use a purpose build macro lens. I use the Laowa manual only macro lenses, and really like them, but you should be able to improve sharpness without a macro lens, macro just zooms in more on close up targets (some of the ants I photograph are the size of a bee’s tongue).
Setting the camera to manual mode is helpful, so you can focus on what you want, autofocus is unreliable when looking at something perched on a plant, as it may focus on the background or another plant, or try to come up with some compromise between the different things in the field of view, rather than focusing on what you want.
The big thing that I see in your photos that can be improved is shutter speed, it looks too low in your photos. I would use a shutter speed of 1/250 or higher (I would be surprised if you actually had to go to 1/1000)
A higher aperture also improves the depth of field, so I would use the highest aperture you can without having a diffraction problem, or having to push the ISO into noisy territory (I use f/11 for most bee stuff)
And I do shoot in RAW, to avoid any JPEG compressing loss of quality
Have you ever checked out DxO PureRaw for shooting in high ISO? Absolutely miraculous at recovering detail and reducing noise.
It’s a batch processor so it’s often my first stop in editing. But to be able to gain an extra 2 stops on any system (well, most RAW formats) by shooting high ISO makes it a must-have for me and I would guess any other serious macro enthusiast. (Or iNat shooter, even.) Because, of course, those 2 extra stops gives you the room for higher shutter and/or smaller aperture.
They have a free trial which gives you a full week (I think), full featured. It’s really worth looking at.
I didn’t even know processors like this exist, I just load my photos into my mac computer’s photos app, I don’t usually have a big problem with noise up to 800-1600 ISO, and I rarely need to raise ISO above that
With PureRaw, I can get decent shots all the way up to 24000 on my Sony 6300. Mostly, I’ll cap it at 16000 though, for better detail. But combined with a flash I’m often shooting at max f22 and lowest flash power to capture speedsters, with the shutter at my standard flash limit of 1/200 (any higher with a flash and I get shutter crop).
It usually takes a test shot or two in dim situations, but I like having the extra range options that high ISO can give me.
And even without flash, I can still get in there. For ring mount or even camera mounted flood leds, that high ISO option gives me a kind of snoop-n-shoot in dim areas, with good coverage like a flash, but with continuous ‘what you see’ type shooting not possible without that high ISO support.
I have found that clip-on lenses like Raynox are most useful for slow-moving/stationary organisms; for insects in flight (e.g., bumblebees) it can be rather frustrating because the lens can then only focus within a specific, limited range. While it’s possible to use the zoom to focus, or move the camera to follow the insect, you should be aware that this is a very different process than working with an autofocus lens that can focus to infinity.
Many tele lenses have a fairly long minimum focus distance – presumably the assumption is that people will mostly be using them to photograph things that are far away. But it really depends on how they are designed, and for most camera models it should be possible to find zoom lenses that have better close-up capacity (I’m not familiar with Canon offerings specifically), though they may not be as sharp at the minimum focus distance as a dedicated macro lens.
For bumblebees you may not need “true” macro (1:1 magnification). I use a manual macro lens for bees, but a lot of the time I am probably working at something between 1:2 and 1:4 rather than the maximum magnification.
It is and it isn’t. One of the problems I have is that when I use 4k video to capture faster moving things, the extracted frames that I post to iNat loose the video’s metadata, including capture time, and I have to be diligent to change this before posting or archiving to my own drives.
Also, with a manual lens, even for stills, you lose aperture metada.
OTOH, knowing some definitive cam/lens/exposure details can really go a long way to help me understand what a person is doing in a discussion about shooting tech.
I agree. Especially for flying insects. Which is one of the reasons I often go to 4K video for those. It’s like having a continuous stream of shots 30 times a sec. Especially useful for “hope for the best” focusing situations like working with a Raynox. But it can work.
Mind you, you need to be prepared to spend time in a video editor and learn to control video compression noise. But often, for me, it is the only way to get a decent catch of something that is extremely flighty.
I understand wanting accurate metadata for your own photos, for personal use, but in what way is the camera metadata important on iNat? I have never paid much attention to what data is recorded in my own observations, beyond making sure the date, time and place are accurate. How would metadata pertaining to ISO, speed or aperture be useful for iNat purposes?
