A couple from the garden

Son_of_Thor

Son_of_Thor

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Not venturing out at the moment, but did get out into the garden and spotted a couple of things I thought worth pointing the camera at. Not much about in our garden yet, need to plant more insect friendly plants! Still trying to get used to using flash for close up work and varying the output for different lighting conditions. Single shots taken with a Nikon 105mm macro, but switched from a 1.7x teleconverter to a 1.4x teleconverter and cropped in a bit more. The result seems to be better detail (in keeping with sharpness reports of the 2x TC's). Also tried stopping down more as suggested by @GardenersHelper, so both taken at f22. Next time I plan to try stopping down further to try and find the diffraction sweet spot. Also going to try extension tubes next time out as I can't mount a Raynox on the front of the lens due to the flash setup I'm using.

Another Ladybird in the garden by Simon Lundbeck, on Flickr

Not too keen on the background of this one, but IQ is better than I've managed previously. I'm thinking it's a Bee, but not certain. There were a couple around and seemed to be warming up before going about their business

Unidentied pollinator in the garden by Simon Lundbeck, on Flickr
 
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Good experiments.

Perhaps the centre of focus could be fractionally further back on the first? I suspect there might be a very small amount of DOF "lost" in front of the near antenna. Maybe. If so, not much though. Moving the DOF back might turn the bottom of the nearest legs softer, but that might be a price worth paying if the far eye came more into focus. How many shots did you capture? (I take lots of each subject, if I can. The centre of focus tends to vary from shot to shot and so I try to maximise the chance of getting one where it falls best to my eye.)

I rather like the background of the second image. The centre of DOF looks about perfect to me and good DOF coverage. I like it. I think it is a fly, possibly Eristalis pertinax.
 
GardenersHelper said:
Perhaps the centre of focus could be fractionally further back on the first? I suspect there might be a very small amount of DOF "lost" in front of the near antenna. Maybe. If so, not much though. Moving the DOF back might turn the bottom of the nearest legs softer, but that might be a price worth paying if the far eye came more into focus. How many shots did you capture? (I take lots of each subject, if I can. The centre of focus tends to vary from shot to shot and so I try to maximise the chance of getting one where it falls best to my eye.)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback, I see what you mean about the focus - a fraction different could've helped. I also need to try stopping down further - the lens I'm using will go to f32. I only got a couple of this one (and only this one in proper focus unfortunately) as it was on the move and none in the same position. I try to take more where I can...

GardenersHelper said:
I rather like the background of the second image. The centre of DOF looks about perfect to me and good DOF coverage. I like it. I think it is a fly, possibly Eristalis pertinax.
Click to expand...

I thought the background was a bit busy - I've reduced the clarity a lot on the background and it's softened it down a bit which has helped. Thanks for the help with the identification, certainly looks a pretty good match :)
 
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Very nice the hoverfly you can get ideintfied via the UK overfly group on facebook and help with recording this species.
 
Another Hoverfly from the garden - they seem to like this particular shrub (it's in a good spot to warm up when the sun is out). Playing around with aperture and diffraction. This one taken at f32. Slightly softer due to diffraction than a comparable shot at f22, but managed to capture pretty much the whole eye within the depth of field @ f32

Another Hoverfly @ f32 - diffraction test by Simon Lundbeck, on Flickr
 
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