Bees and things.

[alice.]

Canon EOS 400D and the lens I had on me at the time, 50mm f/1.8 II. I think the photo was taken at about.. 3 or 4pm?
Editing: Levels, curves, colour (the photo had an odd blue-ish tint). Not too much..?

Thanks. (:

[shawngrimes]

The DOF seems off to me in this photo. The bee does not seem to be in focus and I'm thinking that is what is supposed to be the subject of this shot. Maybe if you had a different angle to make the bee more pronounced. There also seems to be a lot of unfocused negative space. Maybe try cropping some of the bottom out. Just my thoughts, I'm in no way qualified for a critique but I thought I would give it a shot.

[clockdoc]

Hi Alice and welcome to the group. Not knowing the ISO, shutter speed and f/stop, I am going to guess it was shot wide open at f/1.8 or close to it, creating the minimal depth of field. If so, you did remarkably well getting the sharpness you show here. Having just tested a lens on some bumble bees, I appreciate how difficult it can be to keep them in focus as they go from flower to flower. May want to try flash fill if you are shooting so late in the day. Please tell us a little more about how you shot this.

[alice.]

Originally Posted by clockdoc

Hi Alice and welcome to the group. Not knowing the ISO, shutter speed and f/stop, I am going to guess it was shot wide open at f/1.8 or close to it, creating the minimal depth of field. If so, you did remarkably well getting the sharpness you show here. Having just tested a lens on some bumble bees, I appreciate how difficult it can be to keep them in focus as they go from flower to flower. May want to try flash fill if you are shooting so late in the day. Please tell us a little more about how you shot this.

I shot it at f/1.8, 1/320 and iso 100.. I have no idea how it got so grainy though. I guess I like that anyway. And I did sharpen it a little, since the flower and bee was a bit blurry from resizing.
It wasn't so dark at the time (around about 4PM), so I didn't need to use flash. I haven't got the knack of making it look any good yet either.. whenever I use flash on my photos, they always end up looking overexposed.
Thanks. (:

@shawngrimes: Yeah, it seemed a bit off to me too. But then again, the thing was moving around so much, it was hard to get it in focus properly. As soon as I took this photo (the second of two), it took off.
The negative space was intentional in this one.. I've tried to take photos of bees and butterflies before and they always seemed too look more like a documentary shot. I just experimented with this one. Thanks for your input anyway. (:

[clockdoc]

Thanks for the details. I think you will find that the folks who submit these outstanding photos of insects probably have shot hundreds of exposures to get just what they were looking for.