Wasps (mainly) in flight

Captured hand-held in our garden last week using a Raynox 150 and Venus Optics KX800 twin flash.

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Nick
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenersassistant/collections/
GardenersAssistant Photography Videos - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmBgEwRDfiQMYTPORSzDxvw
https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/t...-dslr-primes-a-journey-of-exploration.531050/

Old G5 technology, F22, and ISO 800...wow, I love them!

Bruce

Very well done. However, I would be using my MC14+300mm instead. I would not want to be that close.

great photos.

How many stings did you get?

Excellent work! Also gives me the willies just looking at them.

Cheers,

Rick

Great set. #3 was my favourite until #10 was viewed. I let out an exclamation with that one.

Great photos ..and you survived to tell the tale

brilliant

Those are great! I have to hand it to you, the last time I peered down a yellow jacket nest there were two sentries right at the opening and they quickly let me know I was too close. Discretion being the better part of valor I never even considered trying to document with images. Well done.

Impressive images Nick.

Great shots! I call those "yellow jackets". I got stung six or seven times by yellow jackets and got hives. I would be using a real, real long lens for those shots.

DrummerBL said:

Old G5 technology, F22, and ISO 800...wow, I love them!

Bruce

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Thanks.

I use f/22 because I like to get as much depth of field as I can for invertebrates, for which I pretty much always use f/22 on micro four thirds. I'm happy to trade off the loss of sharpness/detail from diffraction against the increase in depth of field and do what I can to mitigate the image quality issues with post processing and keeping the output size down to 1400 pixels high.

I use ISO 800 when using flash for invertebrates on micro four thirds so as to keep flash recycling time down. In fact ISO 800 is pretty much my "base ISO" with micro four thirds as I use it most of the time for my other favourite subjects, flowers, buds, seed pods etc (but I use ISO 800 for different reasons - I use natural light for botanical subjects). Actually, I use ISO 800 for the one thing I use APS-C for these days, common birds in flight; that is in order to keep the shutter speed fast enough for the apertures I want to use.

As to the old technology, I find that when using minimum aperture I can get very similar looking results (given raw originals and my current post processing) with almost all of my cameras/lenses, including for example a 10 mpix, ten year old Canon SX10 bridge camera (actually, from JPEG originals in that case). In fact I generally use a bridge camera for medium sized invertebrates like these, for which I shoot f/8 (minimum aperture) and ISO 100 with my bridge cameras, which gives much the same noise, depth of field and (lack of) sharpness/detail as f/22 with ISO 800 on micro four thirds.

I have been photographing these wasps over the course of several days and the first session was with my go to setup for this sort of subject, an FZ330 with Raynox 150 and KX800 twin flash. I think on balance I prefer the FZ330 images, although that is mainly because I happened to catch some poses and combinations that I quite liked, for example the following three (there are another 13 images from that session in this post in the Macro forum).













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Nick
GardenersAssistant Photography Videos - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmBgEwRDfiQMYTPORSzDxvw

drj3 said:

Very well done. However, I would be using my MC14+300mm instead. I would not want to be that close.

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drj3

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Thanks.

I don't know what the working distance of the MC14+300mm is, but perhaps that would not have been practical in this case (not that I have a 300mm or MC14). Perhaps I might not have been able to get far enough away from the nest entrance.

btw, this was from the first session I had with the wasps. I found the tripod too awkward to be worthwhile so I worked hand-held or with a monopod for the half a dozen or so subsequent sessions. (I have been using this as an opportunity to try various combinations of kit on the same subjects.)





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Nick
GardenersAssistant Photography Videos - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmBgEwRDfiQMYTPORSzDxvw

Yep, called yellowjackets or "meat bees" where I live. Typical to have hives in ground and late-summer/fall they get really aggressive. Found to my horror that they will take a large bite out of you, then when you reflexively shake them off or swat at them they'll hang on and sting. And unlike honeybees they can fly off to sting again.

I doubly admire the cautious success shown in these sequences.

Cheers,

Rick

phil from seattle said:

great photos.

How many stings did you get?

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Thanks.

No stings. I have had 12 sessions each of half an hour-ish with various combinations of camera kit. Wasps were buzzing around my head most of the time (inevitable really given how close I was and how they had to detour around the diffuser. I also saw them flying between me and the LCD screen from time to time. Occasionally one would brush against my arms (I was generally wearing a short sleeved shirt) and one got briefly caught up in my hair, which fortunately I don't have much of and it very quickly escaped as I dashed away in case it was the start of a wider attack, which fortunately it wasn't.

I did this once before, in 2015, when we had a nest with its entrance at ground level and I spent hours kneeling in front of it taking photos. Fortunately I didn't get stung then either.

Skeeterbytes said:

Excellent work! Also gives me the willies just looking at them.

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Thanks. For some reason they don't upset me. I've been stung a small number of times in my life (not when taking photos of wasps) and it didn't seem too bad, and I've never been attacked by them en masse. If I had been I expect I would feel differently about it!

Skeeterbytes said:

Cheers,

Rick

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Great set! Personally, i would have shot it with a flamethrower.

Garry Schaefer said:

Great set. #3 was my favourite until #10 was viewed. I let out an exclamation with that one.

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Thanks. I like the pose in #10, similar to one I got with the FZ330 (the third one in this post).

PhotoguyCanada said:

Great photos ..and you survived to tell the tale

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Thanks. Survived so far, yes. Not sure I've finished yet; might do some more if they are still around and active. It's not exactly far to go; they are about 20 feet from where I am sitting by an open door - haven't seen any of them up here though even though they are so close by.

Trevor Carpenter said:

brilliant

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Thanks very much Trevor.