The posing bumble bee.

[greybeard68 41]

Bee-2 by GREYBEARD12, on Flickr


Bee-1 by GREYBEARD12, on Flickr


Bee-4 by GREYBEARD12, on Flickr

 

[daniel1540z]

Im not the expert here but i can see its a lil bit too noisy... did you try to reduce noise a lil bit?

 

[greybeard68 41]

Im not the expert here but i can see its a lil bit too noisy... did you try to reduce noise a lil bit?

Better?


Bee-4 by GREYBEARD12, on Flickr

 

[CMfromIL]

I like the concept of the picture very much. However, it's slightly OOF, and as others have said a bit noisy.

I don't know a lot about your camera (Nikon) but I did look at your settings during the shot.

Nikon D5100

0.001 sec (1/800)

f/9.0

200 mm

1000

Camera
Exposure
Aperture
Focal Length
ISO Speed

I would suggest a couple of things to try for future shots. I'm assuming these were taken outside (not a greenhouse) so daylight should be enough to lower your ISO from 1000 to around 200-400 range.

You are at your longest focal length for the lens (200mm) so try to back off to the 160-180mm range. Usually you don't get the sharpest focus at full zoom.

Change your f/stop from f/9.0 to f/5.6 which should allow you to bump up the speed to 1/1500 or more will 'freeze' up the wing motion. Although when I was at 1/2000 it still didn't stop it! (smaller bee though).

Lastly, the last bunch of shots I took were in manual focus. I've never tried that before, but it worked very, very well. Just find a spot near where the bees are feeding. Focus in on it, and try to anticipate when they are going to fly (very hard!). Snap away.

Good luck. I'd post a picture, but it's your thread so I'll abstain unless you wish to see some shots I've taken.

 

[Joel_W]

Greybeard, as others have alluded to, there are noise, and focus issues. I'm sure you cropped the heck out of these pictures. But just the fact that you could even photograph a flying Bee, just amazes me. I have a hard enough time with them once they've landed on a flower.

 

[greybeard68 41]

Greybeard, as others have alluded to, there are noise, and focus issues. I'm sure you cropped the heck out of these pictures. But just the fact that you could even photograph a flying Bee, just amazes me. I have a hard enough time with them once they've landed on a flower.

This particular bee was very co-operative. He would hover for relatively long periods of time. I wanted to freeze the wings so I shot at iso 1000 and had to crop quite a bit which explains the noise. If I reduce the noise then I start to loose detail so I compromised with what you see. As for focus, it is manual focus at a split second. Even though he is hovering at 200mm f/9 and manual focus it is truly like a shot in the dark. The three shots were the best I got. Thanks for the complements.

 

[DorkSterr]

Astounding Idea but not so good with the execution. I know this is a very difficult shot well done overall.