world of wonder

 

An unexpected splash of sunshine on Friday 16th February led to a window into a world of wonder. With almost Spring-like temps and semi clear skies I thought I'd take the new 60mm Macro lens along to Warriston cemetery. Get to know how to use it before we go off on holiday and I'm trying to read instructions in the sweating undergrowth being eaten by bugs, lens caps on the ground and temper fraying. I had been inspired by seeing Mairi's photos of small bugs and beasties found locally and she let me know what lens she used. (We both use a Lumix G9.) I watched several youTube videos on settings and behaviour. Not so much a science as an art apparently - start with these settings and work outwards. I also got a speedlight (flash gun) and diffuser. Being a fiddly proposition I reckoned it would be good practise and a steep learning curve with both new items to work out and try to get the best out of.

First though I checked out the Water of Leith at Powderhall. It only puts a couple of minutes on the journey to Warriston and there have been several kingfisher sightings lately. My luck was in and this female was sat on a branch by the opposite bank. I took photos and video. She looked like she was not going anywhere. I wondered if I could race back to St Marks bridge, climb down, along and climb up into the cemetery (camera bobbing on my chest) and run back along the path in Warriston to get some closer photos. I did all this at something of a slow run but in the 2 minutes it took she had flown off. However, I felt it was a good omen and excellent start to the day.

me and my shadow

long tailed tit

periwinkle

When I arrived properly at Warriston I had a mooch around and went up to the crypts. It was the sort of weather that might just might bring out a foolishly early butterfly and I have this theory they all hide in the crypts. Nope, nothing there but a good area to explore. I checked the Peter Smellie gravestone and the huddles of ladybirds were active. Most were still asleep but the early risers were beginning to stretch their legs. And I saw a shieldbug, first of the year. Right! Time to go over to the bench and swap the long lens for the new Macro lens, let's see how complex this business is!

ladybird huddle on Peter Smellie stone taken with 400mm lens
Mostly Orange ones but a couple of Pine and no doubt a Harlequin in there too

first photo taken with Macro lens!
Bronze shieldbug

Okay that wasn't too hard. Let's try some more. Back to the huddle and firstly try it without flash. It worked okay but as you zoom in more and more the image becomes quite dark, quite quickly. I put the flash on and try out some of the settings almost at random; TTL (through the lens), M, Multi. They all work and the flash seems to go off in all 3 modes but after a bit of experimentation M (manual I presume?) gives me the option of of fine tuning it brighter or less bright. There is a lot of chimping - reviewing how the last photo looks - does it need more or less light. Initially I didn't make the shutter-speed high enough and there was movement blur. A good starting point is about 1/250 or faster. F8 or higher. ISO 400+ with Flash on manual at 1/16 strength. If image too dark 1/8 or 1/4 etc. (It will depend on your diffuser.) (White balance 5500~5600k although I sorted temperature in post.) However it depends on how much you are zoomed in and how much natural light there is. I tweaked all of those settings and found F11 helpful for a better depth of field. I had intended to focus stack but was so busy juggling all of the above and keeping track of wee bugs running about that I forgot entirely about that. Maybe that is lesson 2. 

macro lens but no flash

while some slept on others were out exploring

macro lens closer still, and with flash

Pine ladybirds

not sure what this is - an egg sack? - you come across 

all sorts of stuff you haven't seen before at this scale

I have never been a big fan of artificial light in photos. So the flash and its settings were all new to me. I bought one with a Li-ion battery as the ones with AA batts were allegedly more prone to uneven light bursts while focus stacking where you'd anticipate the flash going off maybe 50 times in a row in quick succession. I am impressed it gave me no backchat or difficulties and went off every time I took a photo. Focus stacking might be more testing, but so far so good. And it didn't run out of juice for possibly 900~1100 photos.

Also the lens behaved well. It is almost like a normal 60mm lens when set to infinity however the other 3 settings define a range of distances from nearly touching your subject to a polite distance away. (About 12") I suspect not many butterflies will be happy to accommodate this proximity. I chased off all of the flies I approached, long before I got in close. I have, until yesterday, never gone out my way to try to photograph flies (except for brightly coloured bottles or anything exotic.) Now I was super-keen for those compound eyes and hairy bodies!

BTW if you think the"his master's voice" diffuser looks like a piece of shit I am happy to report it cost under a tenner (Pixapro) and folds flat without having to undo 23 stud poppers. It is the slightly shonky top hat that completes the outfit.

The one thing all the youTubes agreed (about the only thing they agreed on) was to use manual focussing: set an approximation of the distance from your subject then finetune the focus by rocking back and forth (not even inches, but mm!) to get your subject sharp. If this is a moving subject you will need strong magic and a full cup of alchemy. Especially when you get to maximum magnification: the focus jumps from one end of a bug to the other if you move it that same distance so it requires patience. Weirdly my camera was really helpful using auto focus which is not supposed to work at these parameters: I suspect it is the revamped animal detection which goes LOOK! an animal! focus on that. Anyway I went with it, although I did a fair bit of swaying back and forth as you'll see in the video. I imagine somewhere there is a warning saying don't even attempt to video handheld without a tripod at large magnification. 

As I said earlier it is more an art than a science as there are too many variables to take into account to accurately predict an outcome and you really have to just play around until you get some joy. Frankly, before I set out, I thought it would take all day and I'd get 4 or 5 slightly worse shots than I'd manage with the bridge camera. I was delighted with how things went, although I wasn't sure how much headway I was making at the time. Also very pleased this specialist kit covers a number of situations from VERY small bugs to scenery and portraits.

snowdrop in close

Ladybirds, especially sleepy ones make excellent models. They move, which keeps you working, but they move slowly. Also they look great. A bright distinctive colour and you can easily track when they are out of focus. Which is a lot. I took around a thousand macro shots photos today and unsurprisingly had less than the usual hit rate. Most of the deletes were focus issues. Also, how many orange ladybird photos are enough? It's all just practice so when that fantastic and rare bug is about to fly off I don't fluff it. The equivalent of doing scales. Although it was so mesmerising at the time I left my body for quite some time and travelled off to miniature world. I have just checked the gps output and I was taking macro photos for over 4hrs! Yikes.

duff leg

a couple of early instars of something

I didn't realise how successful having a bug walk down a stick ^ was until I got home. The ones below were taken when it walked onto my glove. Which is made from a very smooth almost shiny fabric not a big chunky weave wool! How different stuff looks under the macro scope! Also I didn't notice any injuries the ladybirds had - a withered black leg, a large scorch or lesion mark etc. My eyes are not great and I was trying to avoid the on-off of reading glasses up against the EVF.

Also for the gravestone shots - mostly glass smooth marble (from a distance) that looks in these photos like rough hewn rockface with huge natural divots out it - I would lean against them to keep the camera steady. Or just keep a hand in contact as a reference for a steady point. Since all my attention was through the camera and onto a tiny spot in front of me I had to check regularly that I wasn't about to lean on any of my involuntary subjects. I can report that no bugs were damaged in the making of this episode. 

sun roof open for take off! 

tiny spider

I began to look at every small blot on the gravestones. Is that a fly? Is that a tiny insect? Many weren't. A lot were bird poops, which is possibly the above pic of these seedpods glued together. I didn't notice 2 tiny bugs hiding underneath until I got the photo home.

as close as I got before this fly flew
(spoiler alert: more to come in subsequent posts)

So I found some jelly ear fungus on what was likely a dead tree trunk. Yes I know they are weirdly creepy. Again, a long time after the fact I noticed a miniature bug just above the fungii in the photo below. A springtail of some sort. I wondered if it would still be there next visit. (I returned days later and guess what, I couldn't find the tree trunk never mind the springtail!) (Fuck sake Buchanan, old age setting in?)

springtail just above the shrooms

nice background lichen

a huddle in the top of a carved 'D' if memory serves
pine ladybirds are particularly tiny

This feather was small. About 2 inches / 50mm. And had moisture on it from lying in the undergrowth. I thought it would make a decent subject and zoomed in a lot. As you can see the lens takes things down to nearly microscopic. You move the lens closer and it brings it into focus, magically zooming in on the subject as the same time. You can also set it to .4m~infinity and take portraits or scenery shots. Which seems like a fantastic range, and something I don't really understand. Luckily you don't have to know how it works to be able to utilise its magic.

Similarly you can take flower shots from a little distant back or zoom right in. The light from the flash needs to be adjusted accordingly unless the sky is cloudless and the the flower is not n shade. The next session of learn macro will be set in the botanics for obvious reasons.

I was hunting around for shieldbugs. Feeling they would be the right size and quality of insect to photo in greater detail. The first one, a bronze shieldbug, had flown off. After a hunt I found another, this time a Green birch shieldbug, I think, though I am not an expert. I think it might have been in danger of drowning on a gravestone that had some water on. Or maybe it was just thirsty. I doubt it felt much relief about my rescue as I photographed the hell out of it for the next hour. Hopefully it was not unduly bothered by the diffuse flashes: I haven't actually been round the business side of the diffuser to see what sort of a zap it gives. Anyway the shieldbug did not fly off, so I read that as tacit agreement to proceed. Most of the shots were on gravestones or a dried leaf and I did as little interfering as possible other than place a leaf beside it and photo the result. After a comprehensive session I left it in peace.

It was about this time Alan turned up. He is much more a ladybird enthusiast and specialist than myself and had come across about 10 or 11 species that day. I felt I had maybe seen three or 4 tops. He pointed me towards a striped ladybird (photo below) which only look different (in my dim eyes) from a lot of the others when you get in close. It looked great in the warm late afternoon light but pretty bad under the cold flash of my lamp. It helped to get more background sky in the photo (further below) although I was unsure why I couldn't just record the warmly lit scene in the viewfinder rather than set off the harsh cold light of the flash. Particularly when zoomed right in. 

Striped ladybird
- none of the warmth of the real life situation

2 spot?

ichneumon or parasitic wasp?

The striped ladybird looked better in this scene. Unsure why.

earwig hiding in a niche

pine ladybirds

most likely a harlequin ladybird, they are becoming more 

and more frequent and can be in any of a hundred+ patterns

on my glove

also taken with the macro lens

I had a wonderful time. While there are more permutations and things that can go wrong, I really enjoyed the challenge of the macro lens (and seeing the results) and felt I'd only just scratched the surface. Next trip out is to the Botanics as mentioned. Expect flowery stuff but also some more flies. I know, can't wait, right? 😁

This is not one of my better videos - in fact it is more out of focus than in. It is here to give you an idea of how easy it is (or not) to keep the subject in the small depth of field available and how most of the time it is not. However in its defence I feel a warmth and gratitude to all the bugs featured who have been very patient while I have been leaning over them. I hope they didn't mind too much.