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Joanne came to visit, so I thought to impress her with the double-reverse macro setup. Unfortunately, as I alluded to in the last post, the real world is difficult. I was about to give up when she found these pretty little flowers.
At first, I just wanted to get a couple shots of Joanne and these flowers, so I took off the inverted nifty fifty and just shot with the 100/2.8 macro. I love that lens. I don't use it very often, because it's not all that versatile, and so I keep forgetting how beautiful the lens is (8-blade aperture, USM focus...).
When we saw bees crawling around the flowers, I got to work. Because the nifty fifty was already detached, I just went with the usual closest-focus-and-rock-around-until-focus-reached technique. The low-angle sunlight was perfect for doing this with available light, because the flowers were only a couple inches off the ground (this way, I just get behind the flower and don't block the light).
I remember being frustrated in the past because I was chronically rocking the focal plane through the best part of the subject (usually the eyes). This was before the 40D, which fires off these staccato shots at something between 7 and 8 fps. This is twice the temporal resolution I had in the past. So although I've tried imaging bees before, their constant motion has prevented me from getting a good shot - until now.
Check out these images. It's really quite striking how much pollen sticks to these insects - it's like the nectar is a secondary thing, and their main thing is to slather themselves with pollen. I have to spend more time in the park this year - perhaps I will leave work before the sun sets (for once).
