365/170 Bugs/7

Much better, so to make up for yesterday, I'm posting a bunch! Settings were variable, but needless to say, i shot at a smaller aperture, between ƒ5.6 and ƒ/8, high shutter speed and a high ISO.

365/169 Bugs/6

Not as good today, but what can I say, I did this on 3 hours of sleep and a rough day.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/250sec and ISO 800.

365/168 Bugs/5

Bees are really hard to photograph when you're afraid to be stung, so today you'll get a heavily cropped semi-macro. If it's nice out tomorrow, I'll try again, hopefully getting a little closer this time. It's not horrible, but I'd have loved to have captured more detail. Oh yeah, I shouldn't have to mention that when photographing these creatures, high shutter speed is crucial. To capture them mid flight though, you'll need flash to freeze the wings.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/640sec and ISO 400.

365/166 Bugs/3

Ants are cannibals, well, they eat other ants. These small ants were eating a much larger specimen of their species, chopping it up into smaller pieces and taking it down into their nest. If you weren't itching before, you will definitely start now.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/125sec and ISO 1250.

365/165 Bugs/2

This is just too much fun. I'm also amazed how much information I can still extract from the Raw files, because these are pretty small crops of the original picture. I think this is where the sharpness of the lens really helps! And I can't imagine how difficult this has to be on Full Frame cameras where the DOF is so minuscule at wider apertures that you can't even get a leg of the flies in focus, so the only way to counter that is lowering shutter speed and increasing ISO and aperture. I like my shutter speed high for these though, just because even camera shake will throw off focus, not to mention these critters are fast!

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/200sec and ISO 800.

365/164 Bugs/1

I love this theme already! It's macro on steroids, especially as small as I'm going! I think I want to save for a longer macro lens to photograph these small creatures better.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.8, 1/400sec and ISO 800.