Insect Photographs - How To?

[jayswildlife]

I bought earlier this year a ring flash for macro video and to try it out with in flight shots, to see how the continuous light works with not-so-sunny days or in middle of forests with low light etc, but haven’t had a chance to test it out yet.
But previously I have used pretty much just sunlight as a source of light and have noticed that early morning sunrise seems to work better than midday sun.

This horsefly photo for example was taken at early morning, around 8am, with sun rising from behind me.
I did crank up the shutter speed up to 1/1600 in this one and used f/2.8 aperture (which btw made taking this and several more photos a pain in the… with manual focus!) and ISO-200 and the sun, at least with these photos, did seem to work quite well.
I have tried to take a photo of a running Carabid beetle with close to same settings at midday and that didn’t turn out well at all, although that beetle was black and sunlight + black beetles doesn’t work too well with each other.

I have seen some photographers set up a tripod next to a flower and used some diffused light source (looked like a flash with continuous light, but don’t remember exactly if it was that because this was couple years ago) and used a remote controller to take the photos when some insect flew onto the flower and off of it, so there are various methods for that as well, some which I’m sure even I haven’t heard of.

[fffffffff]

Well, I mean close-ups, like full-frame stacked photos of flying beetle. I remeber pic of photographers of how they capture tropical frogs and the place looked much brighter than my room.
That’s cool it is so much in focus for 2.8f! I usually use 1/1600 with iso 200-400 for birds in sunny weather, though some stuff is blurred anyway, but it definitely should work for insects too.
Now I only have a ring flash and I stopped at 1/200, though with my ability of accidentally moving the ring it can be faster sometimes.

[jasonhernandez74]

@fffffffff

So do you need beautiful photos or photos for id?

When it comes to insects, you need detailed photos, of the right details.

[fffffffff]

I know what you need for id, very often details =/= “beautiful”.