How to Photograph Insects: Bees; Butterflies; Wasps; and Flies Photography Tutorial Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony Northup in for chapter 8 of
my book stunning digital photography I'd
like to talk about photographing insects
on flowers we find a lot of different
insects including a bees flies wasps
butterflies moths they all pull pollen
from flowers and it's a beautiful
situation because the flowers create a
gorgeous backdrop for you
but it's not as easy as you might think
there are several tricks though that can
make it much easier first your standard
kit lands probably isn't going to allow
you to focus close enough to get good
pictures some do have a macro mode so
check it out it might work for you if
you find that you can't get very close
check out Chapter 12 of my book the
macro chapter and you'll find some
tricks in there that'll allow you to get
even closer including adding very
inexpensive extension tubes what I'm
using is a hundred and fifty millimeter
Sigma macro lens this is the older
version that doesn't have optical image
stabilization optical image
stabilization does help but you don't
necessarily need it because you have to
keep your shutter speed up about above a
hundred and eightieth anyway to freeze
motion so it doesn't matter all that
much now for camera settings I always
set my camera to manual mode auto ISO
which provides for auto exposure even
though I'm in manual mode shutter speed
of 180th or one 250th and then an f-stop
number of about f11 if you find that
your camera doesn't support auto ISO and
manual mode and switch it to shutter
priority mode and set the shutter to
180th or so you will need to manually
adjust the ISO to keep it up keep your
apertures viable and allowing it to auto
expose properly so you might need to set
the ISO to 400 or 800 no here's the
trick rather than trying to auto focus
your camera I'm going to switch it into
manual mode and then dial this all the
way to the left now instead of trying to
manually focus this or using auto focus
or focus with my body so I'm going to
look through here and move my body in
and out until I get it nice and focused
going to do my best to focus on the eyes
it also helps if you don't shoot from
above but actually get down on the side
and get some nice angle on the insects
the single biggest challenge is going to
be depth of field no matter what your
f-stop is the depth of field is going to
be so shallow that you can't even get an
entire bug in focus make sure you focus
on the eye and use the highest f-stop
number you can you could even get away
with f-22 or f32
you
to get that kind of aperture and to
avoid going to a really high ISO number
you want as much light as possible so
rather than just going to where the bugs
are I will find some flowers that are in
full direct sunlight and kind of camp
out there you'll notice that some
flowers are in shadow and some are in
sunlight pick a flower that's nice and
brightly lit and it has nice petals on
it and just hang out there and wait for
the bugs that's a lot easier than trying
to chase them around if you liked this
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