How would you use flash with 1000/s?
Also manual focus is the key thing for macro photography. Autofocus will slow things if you’re photograpging small objects, it can’t understand which point of focus is needed in that situation.
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Like I said at the beginning, those are general, “default” photography tips, not macro-specific ones. Obviously not all of them are applicable to macro lenses, and you’d need to make adjustments based on lenses and what kind of camera you’re using.
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Alright! Then I’d like to tell people to avoid direct sunlight in the afternoon if they want their photos to be better, photographers hate sunlight, really, and searching for insects in the morning or at the evening could help you not only with slow objects, but also with nicer light without strong shadows if you don’t use flashlight. And it’s a good tip for any kind of photography.
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Another tip I’ve seen regarding pollinators is instead of trying to follow an insect with your camera focus on one flower and wait for something to land on it. You’ll already have the scene (mostly) in focus, giving you more time to take photos.
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I’ve been doing macro photography of live insects (mostly ants and wasps) for 11 years, and it is definitely challenging for any species, but horseflies are among the hardest of the hard, my personal recommendation is to get good with ants, crickets, wasps, ect so you know how to hole and focus and zoom the camera before you try flies
Of course if you want to kill it you don’t have to worry about it flying away, I sometimes do this with some of the really fast running ant species. I have never tried the refrigerator trick, but I hear it works well with fast ants, just make sure to have air-holes so it can breath, but not big enough for it to get out, and make sure it doesn’t freeze, parts of my fridge actually get below freezing
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I had a fridge that randomly did that to the whole interior before it died. It caused an unopened can of carbonated water to burst, and froze eggs solid in their shells.
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Thats what I do to all the tiny critters that enter my room at night. Trap them in a jar then slam down on hard surface to stun them for just long enough to take decent pictures. And then toss them outside (and hopefully check photos beforehand to avoid regrets).
Jay? The link on your iNat Forums Profile to your iNaturailst profile doesn’t work. I think it was pasted twice or something.
Here’s what is looks like:
iNat profile: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/https://www.inaturalist.org/people/jayswildlife
There’s a bug report for it.
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Can you link to it? I was looking for an existing one last night and couldn’t find it, so I just commented on the original topic requesting it.
it’s not pasted 2x. Pasting implies it was a user action.
There was a change to the iNat profile field in the forum preferences that added “https://www.inaturalist.org/people/” to the field.
This resulted in that string getting appended as a prefix to all the ones that already had "https://www.inaturalist.org/people/[user id number]”.
Hm, can’t find it, maybe there’s only the theme about links, and as I understand now it’s better to create not a bug report, but a theme with warning to change the link for people who added it.
Yeah, I have noticed that same thing with few other people and their profiles. I even checked my profile page settings if I accidentally pasted it twice, but it’s only once there.
But what @Star3 said just above, makes a lot of sense. You apparently only need to paste your username there, not your actual iNat profile link and will fix it.
And I just checked, it works, plus there is actually a text below the box that says “Enter your iNat username and we’ll link to your profile on iNat.” which I completely missed the first time, so that’s my bad haha
You didn’t miss it the first time, because it didn’t have any text below the box asking for your user name when the field was first added on June 25.
Per Carrie, that change to the field to use the user name was only added around August 14th.
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Ahh alright! I think I had just added the link there couple days earlier before that latest change was made.
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I’ve been doing macro photography for almost 30 years…I have some good images, some bad images and some award winning images in my portfolio. So I will share what I know from “on the job” experience and a lot of trial and error over the past 30 years with the hope that it will help someone in their journey down the road of macro photography.
NOTE>>>
The info given above suggesting 1/1000 second shutter speed has no place in macro insect photography…maybe in sports or racing but not in macro.
Avoid direct sunlight, it causes harsh shadows and blown out highlights.
Anyone with experience in insect macro knows that manual focus is a key element in macro photography.
…>>>>
.
Macro insect photography is a patience game and diffusion of flash is a key element to getting good macro images.
Generally… I shoot at around f8 - f16 aperture,
my flash set to 1/125 second - 1/200 second,
ISO of 100 - 400 (occasionally going up on ISO to 800, but only if truly needed, which is rare).
Early mornings, overcast days, lightly shaded areas are the most desirable conditions…IMHO and experience.
I do use a tripod on occasions, but I shoot freehand most of the time.
A remote shutter release is a big help to avoid camera shake.
With less active subjects you can use the timer on your camera to also avoid camera shake.
I, myself don’t and never have used the “freeze/cold” technique…just seems a bit out of the norm to subject the critter to a “climate change” so quickly…I believe it does stress the subject, therefore I don’t use it.
Patience…remember patience.
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I was thinking about writing a bit longer example of my own way of macro photography, but you actually covered a vast majority of what I would have said myself, so thank you for that!
I do have to disagree with the 1/1000 shutter speed having no place in macro, because I have tried to photograph insects in flight and imo 1/1000 works fine for that.
You can go with less too, for example if you photograph bees, butterflies, flies etc just landing or taking off from a flower or something, but I like to try and catch at least some wing motion from hoverflies, bee flies and horseflies etc so I have gone for 1/1000 few times.
One thing is for sure though, you won’t be using flash with that shutter speed, or you use a ring flash with continuous light or sunlight or just daylight with smaller aperture, though you may have to have to deal with the potential harsh shadows and/or blown out highlights as you mentioned yourself.
But otherwise everything you said is pretty much everything that I’ve learned in the last 4 years of doing macro photography.
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Capturing “in flight” photos is not included in the macro photography that I do…For me that is an “action” type of photography, where macro is almost “portrait” type…if ya get what I mean by that.
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Definitely did get what you meant by that, yes!
But “action” type of photography can be done with macro too and from a very close range as well, so I’d at least consider those as “macro-action” type of photography or something like that, because there are various types of ways to do macro photography, from the typical “portrait” style to “extreme macro” etc etc and that’s where I based my opinion, a matter of what type of macro photography you do :)
But you’re completely right and I do agree that in portrait type of macro photography, 1/1000 shutter speed has no place.
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I never read about that theme exactly, but I guess close macro flight shots made with several out sources of light to compensate the speed?