Yesterday I posted a picture in "Share Your Shots" of a bee that I took in our front garden. There was an unexpected great response. The underlying tone was that it was some miracle shot. That's far from the truth. Here's the pic, and "How I Took It." Enjoy!
Here was the simply recipe. I used a Nikon D3, a Nikkor 105mm Micro lens, and a Nikon SB-800. I set the camera to shutter priority for 1/8000th of a second, and then let the camera figure out the aperture, which ended up being f/3.5 at iso 800. EV was 0, and WB was set to Auto. Metering was set to Pattern. With a bit better timing than I had, you could probably get a similar result with 1/1000th of a second. That's all the easy part.
The hardest part of this project was getting the bee to cooperate and stay in the field of view. I played with a few different combinations of focusing: single and continuous, with AF set to Dynamic AF. I ended up using continuous with Dynamic AF (9-point). This allowed the camera to constantly change focus while tracking the bee. It took some doing, but after about 30 shots, I finally timed it right and the bee fell right where I wanted him. As a bonus, he happened to be at the same plane as the flower.
I may try to shoot it again at F/8 or so so I can increase the DOF a little bit. Give it a go, and post your results in this thread. I'd love to see your shots!